title: Global climate change.
abstract: Most of the last 100,000 years or longer has been characterized by large, abrupt, regional-to-global climate changes. Agriculture and industry have developed during anomalously stable climatic conditions. New, high-resolution analyses of sediment cores using multiproxy and physically based transfer functions allow increasingly confident interpretation of these past changes as having been caused by "band jumps" between modes of operation of the climate system. Recurrence of such band jumps is possible and might be affected by human activities.
authors.affiliation: Earth System Science Center and Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. ralley@essc.psu.edu
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Alley
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lynch-Stieglitz
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Severinghaus
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D002980:Climate; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D013995:Time