"The Sleeping Dragon" --Thousands of Years of Climate Change: Definitive New Data Released

The Daily Galaxy: Using a cutting-edge research technique, UCLA researchers have reconstructed the temperature history of a region that plays a major role in determining climate around the world. The team chose the specific area examined in the study because it is Earth's warmest open ocean region and a primary source of heat and water vapor to the atmosphere. As a result, temperature changes there can influence climate not just regionally, but globally.

"The tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere system has been called a sleeping dragon because of how it can influence climate elsewhere," said lead author Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the departments of Earth, planetary and space sciences, and atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

The findings, published online Feb. 27 in the journal Nature Geoscience, will help inform scientists about the processes influencing global warming in the western tropical Pacific Ocean.

The study analyzes how much temperatures have increased in the region near Indonesia, and how ocean temperatures affect nearby tropical glaciers in Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Researchers also evaluated the accuracy of existing climate model predictions for that region. The findings illustrate that the region is very sensitive to climate change and that it has warmed considerably over the last 20,000 years, since the last ice age...read more>>>...