Palaeoanalogues of the modern climate – interglacials mis11 and mis19 (a brief review)

by

О.О. Rybak1, 2, 3, Е.А. Rybak2

1Institute of Water Problems of RAS, Moscow, Gubkin St., 3

2Institute of Natural and Technical Systems, Sevastopol, Lenin St., 28.

3Kabardino-Balkaria State University, Nalchik, Chernyshevskiy St., 173

E-mail: o.o.rybak@gmail.com

DOI: 10.33075/2220-5861-2024-3-12-19

UDC 551.583.3+551.583.7  

EDN: https://elibrary.ru/byebec

Abstract:                                            

Evaluating the consequences of future climate change for the environment is one of the most challenging problems of modern climatology. Along with the widespread use of mathematical modeling methods, researchers apply their efforts to the search for analogues of modern climate in the past. It is logical to assume that the combination of orbital factors in the past caused similar climatic conditions, and by collecting proxy data about the environment of that time, first of all, about the past sea level, it is possible to project past conditions into the future. Over the past million years, the Earth’s climate has undergone several glacial-interglacial cycles. Warm periods (Marine Isotope Stages) MIS5, MIS11 and MIS19 (respectively, 115–130, 360–420 and 740–780 thousand years ago) are assumed as analogues of the modern interglacial (Holocene), which began approximately 10 thousand years ago. One of the threats that humanity will inevitably have to face in the future is a rise of the global sea level due to the complex and multifactorial consequences of climate warming. The negative consequences of sea level rise, which is estimated as tens of centimeters by the end of this century, consist primarily of flooding of densely populated coastal areas. Following the paleoanalogues of modern warming, at the maximum warming during MIS11 the sea level rose by 6–13 m relative to the modern level, according to the most reasonable estimates. This range suggests that in addition to the significant degradation of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely to have collapsed, too.

Кeywords: Pleistocene, interglacial, climatic cycles, palaeoclimatology, palaeoanalogue, sea level.

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