ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF THE ANTHROPOGENIC FACTOR ON GLOBAL CLIMATE DURING THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD BASED ON SPECTRAL DECOMPOSITION OF LATE HOLOCENE PALEOTEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THE WORLD

Abstract

Climate has a profound effect on human life and plays a significant role in its history. There are numerous examples of serious social upheavals of local and regional proportions over the last few millennia associated with climate change. Therefore, current global warming and its causes are one of the most pressing and controversial issues in both the scientific and public communities. In this paper, we have assessed the possible contribution of the anthropogenic factor in the formation of climate in different regions of the world during the industrial period (since 1850) by analyzing data on past conditions of the climate system over a sufficiently long time interval. Using harmonic analysis, we have constructed empirical models of climate change over time for these regions and, by extrapolating them to the industrial period, have obtained “natural” scenarios of temperature variations that take into account only the impact of the natural environment and exclude the anthropogenic factor. In all studied regions, instrumentally recorded temperature values significantly exceed the “model” ones. On average, according to “natural” scenarios, the global air temperature should have increased by ~0.02 °C during the industrial period; however, it actually increased by ~0.94 °C. The deviation has been evident since around 1920, gradually increasing subsequently. These facts may indicate the manifestation of an anthropogenic factor that makes a certain contribution to current global warming.