Human-induced climate change has origins far earlier than commonly assumed, according to a study published in the journal Science.
Human-induced climate change has origins far earlier than commonly assumed, according to a study published in the journal Science.
Archeological evidence collected around the world suggests human activity began warming the global climate about 5,000 years ago, according to U of A anthropologist Jack Ives, one of many scientists who contributed data to the study.
The authors found that “existing global reconstructions underestimate the impact of early human land use on Earth’s current ecology,” since most studies of climate change focus on the recent past.
“While there has been an exponential increase in human impacts on climate in the last two centuries, that impact has a long tail running back at least 10,000 years, particularly with the advent of agriculture,” said Ives.
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