Australia's climate history displays the Hockey Stick

The scientific paper, "Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium," published in the journal of the American Meteorological Society, reports the results of reconstructing the Australian climate for the last 1000 years. They used tree rings, cores from corals and ice cores to build the proxy record. This record was then used to help validate climate models. This reconstruction shows the same hockey stick pattern that has been routinely identified in the northern hemisphere. The researchers found the warmest pre-industrial revolution period occurred in A.D. 1238 - 1267, right in the period known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The coldest period occurred between A.D. 1830-1859, at the end of the Little Ice Age. There was no period that matched or exceeded the period since 1950.

This study was interesting for more than the climate pattern. What they found was that they only way they could get models to reproduce this data was to include natural forcings, such as solar and volcanic activity. But, they also found natural forcings could not reproduce the observed warming period since 1950. They only way they could reproduce the data was to include manmade emissions of greenhouse gases.

The climate change deniers will spin this up some how, they always do and the gullible people will fall for their lies and false arguments. But, the data keeps piling up. Within the scientific community there is virtually no debate that manmade climate change is real. Over 97% of climate scientists and over 80% of all scientists in all fields agree that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate.Within the scientific community the focus is now more on understanding the dynamics of climate change and trying to figure out what we can do about it. But, before we can really do anything we must overcome the skepticism the general public has and to soundly refute the climate change deniers. 

Research like this Australian paper will help. It is one more big piece of the puzzle.