RAPID CLIMATE WARMING AT THE LATE GLACIAL—HOLOCENE BOUNDARY AS AN ANALOG OF CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT CHANGE IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 21st CENTURY

O. A. Anisimov, I. I. Borzenkova, , J. Vandenberghe, E. L. Zhiltsova, ,V. A. Lobanov, and T. V. Sapelko

Climate changes in the high and middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere over the last 18,000 years are analyzed. It is shown that the Wurmian cooling maximum—Holocene transition (between 14,000 and 9000 years ago) was accompanied by rapid changes (almost instantaneous from a geological viewpoint) in global temperature at a rate of about 1.0—1.5ºC/100 years. Detailed Greenland and Antarctic ice-core records indicate that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 may have played a key role in the rapid climate oscillations in the late glaciation. Data on rapid climate changes at the late Glacial—Holocene boundary are used for the first time for the assessment of the environmental changes in the future as a result of the rapid growth of greenhouse gas concentration due to anthropogenic activity.