Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 14 March 1997:
Vol. 275. no. 5306, pp. 1618 - 1621
DOI: 10.1126/science.275.5306.1618
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Borehole Temperatures and a Baseline for 20th-Century Global Warming Estimates

Robert N. Harris * and David S. Chapman

Lack of a 19th-century baseline temperature against which 20th-century warming can be referenced constitutes a deficiency in understanding recent climate change. Combination of borehole temperature profiles, which contain a memory of surface temperature changes in previous centuries, with the meteorological archive of surface air temperatures can provide a 19th-century baseline temperature tied to the current observational record. A test case in Utah, where boreholes are interspersed with meteorological stations belonging to the Historical Climatological Network, yields a noise reduction in estimates of 20th-century warming and a baseline temperature that is 0.6° ± 0.1°C below the 1951 to 1970 mean temperature for the region.

Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rnharris{at}mines.utah.edu

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Climate Change Record in Subsurface Temperatures: A Global Perspective.
H. N. Pollack, S. Huang, and P. Shen (1998)
Science 282, 279-281
   Abstract »    Full Text »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)