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Rapid Climate Change
and Climate Surprises
A Look Back and Ahead
B Y G A B R I E L M . F I L I P P E L L I A N D C AT H E R I N E S O U C H
One of the great successes of scientific spheric modeling to build coupled and, The debate about the human fingerprint
ocean drilling has been the identifica- perhaps, predictive scenarios of past and of climate change has evolved as research
tion of rapid and extreme climate- future climate change. has focused more comprehensively on
change events in oceanic sediments. The In this paper we introduce some obtaining accurate records of climate
comprehensive coverage and analytical of the basic concepts behind climate parameters on a global scale. Some of the
toolkit applied to these marine records change, including evidence for a human controversy revolved around the typi-
has enabled us to understand some of fingerprint on present and future cli- cal scientific scrutiny that we all bring to
the key drivers of climate change and mate, and examine the impact that cli- data analysis, with scientists presenting
to quantify the global impacts that cli- mate change has on landscapes and the their results with all of the appropriate
mate change has had on the ocean and people inhabiting them. These examples and reasonable cautions, and policy-
land. Sediment cores recovered from show how an understanding of climate- makers and the public “reading” these
well-placed drilling sites contain cli- change impacts, using a combination of cautions as active debate and argument
mate-change records at human (i.e., marine, terrestrial, and ice records, may within the scientific community about
millennial) timescales, in deep time like provide a window into future human re- global warming. As comprehensive glob-
the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maxi- sponses. Perhaps the greatest lesson that al data sets have been scrutinized espe-
mum (PETM), and in the more recent we have learned from climate-focused cially over the past decade, it has become
glacial/interglacial interval (both top- scientific ocean drilling is that climate clear that the atmosphere is warming,
ics the subject of articles in this issue). change is a geologic truism and thus that polar temperatures are increas-
These high-resolution records bring any debate about the impact of human- ing rapidly, and that one main driver of
some promise that we can begin to produced greenhouse gasses on climate this change is the increase in human-
understand how the Earth system re- should be informed by the dynamic na- produced greenhouse gasses. This scien-
sponded to drivers of climate change in ture of Earth’s past climatic variability. tific reality has now begun to permeate
the past, and perhaps how these systems public and policy spheres, such that the
might respond in a world increasingly CLIMATECHANGE DEBATE? quote by Senator Inhofe above perhaps
dominated by human-altered biogeo- “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, reflects the last gasp for those opposed to
chemical cycles. Hope for an integrated all of the phony science, could it be that the connection between human actions
understanding of climate change gets man-made global warming is the great- and climate change.
even brighter when these marine records est hoax perpetrated on the American At this point, we are seeing a more co-
are combined with terrestrial and ice- people? It sure sounds like it.” gent and productive “debate” about cli-
core data and oceanographic and atmo- U.S. Senator James Inhofe (OK), 2003 mate change circulating in the scientific