There's been some discussion these days regarding whether current warming has any historic analogs in the paleoclimate records.
Handily, this new study was just published:
Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate ConditionsNoah S. Diffenbaugh, Christopher B. Field
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/486Abstract:Terrestrial ecosystems have encountered substantial warming over the past century, with temperatures increasing about twice as rapidly over land as over the oceans. Here, we review the likelihood of continued changes in terrestrial climate, including analyses of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project global climate model ensemble. Inertia toward continued emissions creates potential 21st-century global warming that is comparable in magnitude to that of the largest global changes in the past 65 million years but is orders of magnitude more rapid. The rate of warming implies a velocity of climate change and required range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems, especially in the context of extensive land use and degradation, changes in frequency and severity of extreme events, and interactions with other stresses.
-
Here is an article from Climate Central about the study:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/ecosystems-face-unprecedented-changes-in-the-next-century-16301and also this release form Stanford:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.htmlI was particularly interested when I read this quote from Diffenbaugh:
“The key difference is the rate of change,” said co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, in an interview. “The combination of rate and magnitude over the next century is unprecedented. In the context of the geological record of the last 65 million years, this (change in the 21st century) is likely to be an order of magnitude, or two or three orders, more rapid.”If this study holds up, then we really are rushing blind into an unknown future.