Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years? – Cobb County Courier

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture. retrieved from https://www.photolib.noaa.gov/Collections/National-Weather-Service/Weather-Wonders/Sunset-Sunrise/emodule/653/eitem/2643 by Darrell Kaufman, Northern Arizona University, [This article first appeared in The Conversation, republished with permission] As scorching heat grips large swaths of the Earth, a lot of people are trying to put the extreme temperatures into context and asking: When was it ever this hot before? Globally, 2023 has seen some of the hottest days in modern measurements, but what about farther back, before weather stations and satellites? Some news outlets have reported that daily temperatures hit a 100,000-year high. As a paleoclimate scientist who studies temperatures of the past, I see where this claim comes from, but I cringe at the inexact headlines. While this claim may well be correct, there are no detailed temperature records extending back 100,000 years, so we don’t know for sure. Here’s what we can confidently say about when Earth was last this hot. This is a new climate state Scientists concluded a few years ago that Earth had entered a new climate state not seen in more than 100,000 years. As fellow climate scientist Nick McKay and I recently discussed in a scientific journal article, that conclusion was part of a climate assessment
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