A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat flux data, borehole temperature data, and the instrumental record

2008/07/01 by Shaopeng Huang, Henry N. Pollack, P.Y. Shen · 48 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Tree-ring climate responses #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Climate change and permafrost #Borehole #Holocene #Geology #Quaternary #Heat flux #Flux (metallurgy) #Glacial period #Climatology #Physical geography #Oceanography #Paleontology #Geography #Heat transfer

paper · pdf · doi:10.1029/2008gl034187

published in Geophysical Research Letters 35(13) (American Geophysical Union)

openalex publication_date 2008/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

Abstract

We present a suite of new 20,000 year reconstructions that integrate three types of geothermal information: a global database of terrestrial heat flux measurements, another database of temperature versus depth observations, and the 20th century instrumental record of temperature, all referenced to the 1961–1990 mean of the instrumental record. These reconstructions show the warming from the last glacial maximum, the occurrence of a mid‐Holocene warm episode, a Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a Little Ice Age (LIA), and the rapid warming of the 20th century. The reconstructions show the temperatures of the mid‐Holocene warm episode some 1–2 K above the reference level, the maximum of the MWP at or slightly below the reference level, the minimum of the LIA about 1 K below the reference level, and end‐of‐20th century temperatures about 0.5 K above the reference level.

Citations

• Heat flow from the Earth's interior: Analysis of the global data set
• Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures
• Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations
• Borehole climate reconstructions: Spatial structure and hemispheric averages

Cited by

• A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra‐tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millennia
• The extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere temperature in the last two millennia: reconstructions of low-frequency variability
• Hockey stick graph (global temperature) [wikipedia]

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• A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
• Global Variability in Multi‐Century Ground Warming Inferred From Geothermal Data
• A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra‐tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millennia
• Millennial temperature reconstruction intercomparison and evaluation
• A noodle, hockey stick, and spaghetti plate: a perspective on high‐resolution paleoclimatology