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Temperature record for Midwest shows impact of global warming mongabay.com January 29, 2007 The researchers, lead by Dr. Lee Nordt, a geology professor at Baylor University, "developed the first comprehensive temperature record for the Great Plains by assessing the behavior of the stable isotopic composition of buried soils," according to a news release from Baylor. "Using this methodology, Nordt examined the relationship between the fluctuations in the abundance of warm-season grasses and the mean July temperature from 61 modern native prairies. He then applied a mathematical equation of what he found in the modern record to the buried soil record from the same region. The result was a reliable temperature curve for the past 12,000 years." "Grasslands make up a significant portion of the world's ecosystems, but we never had a way to create a reliable temperature scale," Nordt said. "This new method will provide the base. We can now go to many other grassland regions, apply the new method and create a temperature curve."
Nordt said that warming temperatures over the past 12,000 years are mostly the result of increasing intensity of the sun but that current declining intensity should be producing lower temperatures. He suspects that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases might be stalling the expected fall in Midwest temperatures. "Is this caused by global warming or are temperatures just lagging behind? We don't know," Nordt said. "At some point in the next few thousand years, I would expect temperatures to fall, but for now we have to be sensitive to both Earth's natural cycles and global warming produced by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide." This article is based on a news release written by Matt Pene from Baylor University Comments? News options SHARE THIS ARTICLE:
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