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Common Era in the Holocene

A new paper which uses a synthesis of 93 published records reveals that moisture availability increased over large portions of North America over the past 2000 years, the Common Era (CE).

Published yesterday in Climate of the Past, "Placing the Common Era in a Holocene context: millennial to centennial patterns and trends in the hydroclimate of North America over the past 2000 years" by Bryan Shuman et al. shows in many records that the second millennium CE tended to be wetter than the first millennium CE.

The long-term changes formed the background for annual to multi-decade variations, such as "mega-droughts", and also provide a context for amplified rates of hydrologic change today.

This paper is a contribution to the PAGES 2k Network special issue "Climate of the past 2000 years: regional and trans-regional syntheses".

Access the paper here and the special issue here.