全球气候变化对社会影响.docVIP

全球气候变化对社会影响 　　How Climate Cbange Kills Societies 　　Recent concerns about global climate change, especially the impact of human activity on these changes, have sent scientists scrambling to discover how current climate trends fit into the larger picture of climate change throughout Earths history. With a growing pile of climate change throughout Earths history. With a growing pile of paleoclimate data at their disposal, researchers are also taking a closer look at how complex societies responded to past climate change. 　　Understanding how these cultures adapted to events like persistent droughts could provide valuable perspective on how maodern societies might respond to future climate change, says Peter deMenocal, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. 　　THELONG VIEW 　　Modern climate data, recorded by instrument, allow us to study climate phenomena that vary on a time scale of several years, deMenocal notes in Science. But that recored is far too short to capture large-scale events like the drought that wiped out Roanoke-events that we can confirm through other detailed climate records like tree rings or lake sediments. 　　These climate proxies, among others, indicate that the past 12,000 years of Earths climate have been a bumpy ride, punctuated by widespread cooling events and droughts that persisted for decades and often centuries. These events are associated with changes in ocean circulation, solar radiation and volcanism. Many of them occur on thousand-year cycles, indicating that solar variability and interactions between the ocean and atmosphere are especially important factors influencing these climate changes. 　　A growing store of detailed and welldated paleoclimate records has contributed totransformation in the field that allows scientists to evaluate cultural records within the context of climate.?De Menocal says. Researchers are using this new perspective to examine how past societies managed to cope-or faile