In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists have used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the last 1000 years.

The study was led by researchers at the University of Melbourne and used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study Australasian temperatures over the past millennium and compared them to climate model simulations.

Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions - similar to those caused by burning fossil fuels and other human activities now - helped heat the planet and end the last ice age some 11,700 years ago, scientists reported on Wednesday.

In a finding that offers a response to those skeptical about human-caused global warming, researchers from Harvard University, Oregon State University and other institutions reported in the journal Nature that rising temperatures followed increases in carbon dioxide.

The collapse of an ice sheet in Antarctica up to 14,650 years ago might have caused sea levels to rise between 14 and 18 metres, a study showed on Wednesday, data which could help make more accurate climate change predictions.
The melting of polar ice could contribute to long-term sea level rise, threatening the lives of millions, scientists say.

The collapse of an ice sheet in Antarctica up to 14,650 years ago might have caused sea levels to rise between 14 and 18 metres (46-60 feet), a study showed on Wednesday, data which could help make more accurate climate change predictions.

The melting of polar ice could contribute to long-term sea level rise, threatening the lives of millions, scientists say.

The mystery of how a subglacial mountain range the size of the Alps formed up to 250 million years ago has finally been solved, scientists said on Wednesday, which could help map the effects of climate change.

The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains are buried 3 km below the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on the planet.

There have been periodic droughts in the American southwest for millenia. A new study at the UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research has revealed a previously unknown multi-decade drought period in the second century A.D which was in the middle of the Roman era. The findings give further evidence that extended periods of aridity have occurred at intervals throughout our past. Almost nine hundred years ago, in the mid-12th century, there was a better known multi-decade drought in the southwestern US made locally famous by the Anasazi.

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