Artic Sediments Indicate Climate Change is Unlike Natural Variation

Scientists are slowly diminishing the possibility that climate change is a natural variation. Research reveals that sediments retrieved from a remote Arctic lake contain rare, unprecedented information about the past 200,000 years, much longer record or prediction on past climates. It is a long sequence or archive of sediment that has survived arctic glaciations and the data it contains is one of a kind. From the data, there are periods of time when the climate was as warm as today, but under natural causes and well-understood patterns of the Earth's orbit around the sun. Today, the ecosystem is shifted and it is different than past warming cycles. The 20th century is the only period during the past 200 millennial in which aquatic indicators reflect increased warming, despite the slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, which should lead to climatic cooling.

Reference:
Axford et al. Recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 19, 2009; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0907094106