Mangini’s Curves: Leading German Science Magazine Admits Stark Natural Climate Fluctuations Over Last 8000 Years

Prof. Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany is an expert for temperature reconstructions using stalactites and stalagmites.

He was allowed to speak a whole 15 minutes at the World Extreme Weather Congress in Hamburg last moth, where he presented some sobering results. These in turn were reported by the print edition of a leading German science news magazine Bild der Wissenschaft.Hat-tip: Die kalte Sonne website.

His presentation was called: “Climate Curves in Comparison– Why There Are Such Large Differences“.

In the current April 2012 issue of Bild der Wissenschaft, Klaus Jacob has a report “Klima in Kalk“ (Climate in Limestone) where he describes the method and climatological relationships of stalactites that Mangini uses. Jacob writes:

[Mangini] has been working with stalactites and stalagmites for 15 years – and has come to an amazing conclusion: The natural climate fluctuations are greater than what the science has previously assumed. This has consequences for the future as the fluctuations will superimpose the human impacts. Thus the continents will not necessarily always become warmer, rather the trend could take a break, or even a temporary cooling is possible.“

Don’t you love how the main stream media, after years of being stuck on CO2, are finally waking up to REAL SCIENCE. Jacob continues:

[Using stalactites and stalagmites] Mangini has reconstructed the central European climate over the last 9000 years. Clear to see are the stark ups and downs with differences of about 2°C. […] Already on multiple occasions over the last 8000 years the temperature shot up 1°C within just 200 years. The temperature appears to fluctuate naturally more starkly than what the IPCC shows in its reports […] Mangini’s curves now show […] the start of a cooling phase.“

Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s Die kalte Sonne site writes that Jacob’s article addressed some important points, which other German journalists are unfortunately too spineless to write about:

(1)  The pre-industrial, post Ice Age period was characterized by natural climate fluctuations without the involvement of CO2.
(2)  These natural fluctuations today still play a major role on our climate, which up to now has been played down.
(3)  The IPCC models are thus not as perfect as they are often claimed to be.
(4)  The warming stop since 2000 could continue, and even bring a modest cooling with it.
(5)  Ocean cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) will suppress the temperatures over the coming decades.

Die kalte Sonne site then expresses some disappointment that Jacob did not mention the likely cause of these past, stark climate fluctuations – cyclic solar activity. Here skeptics will have to be patient with the mainstream media. We cannot expect them to change overnight. Rome, after all, was not built in a day.

Prof. Mangini’s presentation coincides with a recently released study that adds yet another straw to the camel’s back. The study Holocene climate variability in North-Eastern Italy: potential influence of the NAO and solar activity recorded by speleothem data, authored by Scholz et al (co-authored by Mangini) concludes from the data:

This suggests that climate variability in Northern Italy was influenced by both solar activity and the NAO during the Holocene.”

There we are once again: the sun and oceans dominate.