Fuerteventura, one of the eight major Canary Islands, was not the “desert in the ocean” it is today throughout the Early to Middle Holocene.
Scientists (Sánchez-Marco et al., 2026) have recovered the remains of several bird species known to reside at the edges of bodies of water (e.g., lagoons, lakes, rivers) with riparian vegetation and dense forests from a cave in Fuerteventura, the most arid of the Canary Islands. The bones date to ~9000 to 5000 years ago.
This discovery “unexpectedly” reveals the Holocene climate was much warmer (as much as “3 to 7°C”) than present. It was also “much wetter than it is today” a few thousand years ago, and thus regions that are today arid and largely uninhabitable were recently able to host to far more plant and animal species diversity.
The cooler Fuerteventura environment is today covered in sand dunes and classified as an arid desert, as it receives only 100-150 mm of rain annually. The island no longer supports water fowl habitat or any other species dependent on large annual rainfall totals.
“Recent ice core analysis from northern Greenland reveals that the highest Holocene temperatures would occur between 10 and 7 ka BP, 3 to 7 °C warmer than today. This suggests that the animals studied here died in warmer conditions than those prevailing today.”
“It seems likely that there was a lagoon or pond near the cave, around which large areas of riparian vegetation developed. Likewise, wooded areas with undergrowth, where there were even wrynecks, were probably also in the vicinity of the cave. The ornithological record from Cueva del Llano suggests that in the early stages of the Holocene, the dominant climate in the Canary Islands was much wetter than it is today. In Fuerteventura, there were bodies of water with riparian vegetation and more or less dense forest areas with shrubby undergrowth. Higher global temperatures than the present ones may have led to changes in the annual displacements of the Azores High and promoted a more intense rainfall regime, which fostered the maintenance of more diverse habitats and, consequently, a significantly more diverse avian fauna than today. The birds linked to these habitats likely disappeared with climate changes, which led to notably more xeric conditions.”
Image Source: Sánchez-Marco et al., 2026
Fuerteventura was “trendy” in the 80s and 90s…the only fossils were the drinks-party types bandying the name about…
Maybe the AMOC was “collapsed” back then? 😉
The main pressure cells such as the Azores high move around as necessary to maintain a global temperature determined only by solar input, atmospheric mass and the downward force of gravity.
Such movement adjusts the rate at which energy is lost to space so as to balance the upward pressure gradient within the atmosphere with the downward force of gravity.
That principle applies to every planet with any sort of atmosphere.
The thermal effects of other factors such as radiative gases are similarly neutralised by such movements within the convective overturning of any atmosphere.
Without such a balancing process an atmosphere is lost to space or solidifies on the ground.
Recent climate science has been a complete disaster.
“Recent climate science has been a complete disaster.”
I wish more people would start to get it. It’s not science. It’s cultural Marxism whitewashed with a scientific (or pseudoscientific) veneer to fool the people who aren’t paying attention. the ultimate goal of cultural Marxism is the tear down western society and economy from the inside. In that sense you are absolutely correct. It hasn’t been a disaster; it has been a success (so far).
Looks like a nice, bountiful copium mine. I mean, sure, it all started when Murksism was brought to Earth by that dastardly space flea. It must be the cause of the problem… rather than, say, a mediocre manifestation thereof.
Until then, a paradise of pure science unsullied with quackery flourished all over ⅩⅦ-ⅩⅨ centuries. Imagine this — adult people arguing serious matters such as phrenology, whether an insect hive is monarchy or republic, and so forth. Obvious fakes like that platypus thing or okapi had no chance back then.
Some discoveries like N-rays and Eoanthropus dawsoni happened later, but there may or may not have been mysterious influence of space murksism, so perhaps they don’t count.
Further evidence that abrupt climate change can have enormous life-affecting consequences over a relatively short space of time, whatever its cause.
By the way, looks like WUWT has removed its long-running USCRN side-panel feature. By amazing coincidence, this happened on the exact month that USCRN posted its highest ever monthly temperature anomaly (+7.22F, (+4.01C), March 2026), lending the data in its chart a clearly-visible upward slope, even without the addition of a trendline.
I guess that after more than 21-years with “properly sited” and “state of the art” USCRN warming faster than the adjusted US ClimDiv over the same period, this latest blow was too much to bear.
How long now before USCRN goes under-the-bus altogether alongside everything else that has contradicted the narrative on this site over the years (looking at you, BEST?
Further evidence that you truly are a Foolish Nincompoop.
Combine the VERY COLD blob over northern Canada, with the warm blob over USA… They basically cancel out.
Some people really do not understand rouge WEATHER events…. and probably this March spike was human caused..
Nincompoop doesn’t even start to describe such ignorance.
Rouge weather? I see mostly blue and yellow on your chart.
d’oh…. rogue !!! well spotted.
i thought you were going for rough.
So used to seeing the MSM showing slightly warm temps in bright red.. 🙂
“Further evidence that abrupt climate change can have enormous life-affecting consequences over a relatively short space of time, whatever its cause.”
What it shows is that a warmer planet is likely to be an improvement- for much of the planet.
He’s one of those socialists who is convinced that today’s weather is perfect, and any change caused by man is by definition bad, if not deadly.
Since you appear to be a trendologist, why don’t you discuss what the term “outlier” means in terms of analyzing data. Perhaps you can provide a standard means of calculating what might be an outlier. Anyone who is familiar with physical science should have this information readily available. You can even ask an AI how to do that.
By the way, is the extreme cold in Canada of any concern to you? Perhaps they would offset themselves if Canada participated in the CRN network.
He’s not even a trendologist. he’s a datapointologist. Looks for the most extreme datapoints (outliers, as you say), takes them out of context and tries to create an irrational scare story.
It’s not a question of trends or outliers; it’s a question of why WUWT chose to drop its long-standing USCRN feature on the very month on which that data network reported its warmest ever temperature anomaly.
Your question reeks of assumptions that there was a nefarious reason behind the page updates not including your pet chart.
Everything from the side bar seems to have gone.. replaced with adverts
Sorry TFN, that is exactly what it is about.
The fact that you have attempted to dance away from the issue of outliers and time series is indicative of your expertise in analyzing data.
Apart from the step change at the El Nino in 2016, and a slight bulge at the 2023/4/5 El Nino..
There is no trend.
There is no possible way the March spike was cause by human activity.
Interesting that this was reported when the satellite data shows a continued decline towards the 30 year average from the Hunga Tonga Max. We’ll be down to the 1991- 2020 average soon, and going down, naturally and cyclicly, as Ludecke and Weiss predicted from the natural cyclic periods in the temperature time series in 2017 …. just sayin’.One reading does not a global record make.
Since it has been much warmer in the recent past, with no enhanced CO2, why do you assume that all of the current warmth that the planet is enjoying, must have been caused by CO2?
Which should have been a Null Hypothesis presented alongside Al Gore’s movie.
The CAGW Hypothesis is not even logically consistent. As MarkW says, if temperatures have fluctuated wildly in the past without Human intervention, why should anyone suppose that the current (very slight) warming is anthropogenic?
Its because they are anti-science deniers in the pay of fossil fuel companies. That must be it. What else could it possibly be?
Maybe they’re just people who don’t like to be wrong?
WUWT told us for years that the US climate network was useless and that USCRN, with its ‘proper siting’ and ‘state of the art equipment’ would prove this to be the case and sort everything out.
Instead, the opposite happened. ClimDiv and USCRN are both warming as fast as the rest of the N Hemisphere land areas and the ‘best estimate’ trend in USCRN is warmer than the one in the adjusted ClimDiv.
Looks like that’s finally become too much of a bad look for the site, so it has decided to ‘hide the incline’!
Maybe you are just projecting your own bias and declaring what you would have done.
I’m only saying what I see. To see you have to look.
I’m only saying that your ability to see only that which supports the party narrative, is legendary.
The bad look comes from people who don’t know how to properly analyze data! Especially time series. Looking at you!
So WUWT ‘just happened’ to drop (without explanation, AFAIK) its long-running USCRN feature on the exact month that USCRN posted its warmest ever temperature anomaly?
Wanna buy a bridge?
“Wanna buy a bridge?”
You must have have plenty to sell, from the heap you have be sold by the climate and EV shills. !
By now, you must own nearly every bridge in whatever country you live in.
In 1910, the March anomaly in the same data set was 6F, not significantly different from today considering the wide weather variability from month to month.
So much effort arguing that mankind’s sins will lead to his burning death. Just leave your donation in the collection plate to make the weather better.
It’s hardly “the same data set” when USCRN began in 2005.
You’re relying on the data set WUWT says we can’t trust; yet here you are… trusting it.
What this demonstrates is how a small, isolated domain reacted to a radical climate regime shift. It does not translate at all into how the planet will react to a small change in energy distribution. It does confirm that warmer and wetter is generally better for life.
Island biogeography is a specialty subdiscipline of ecology, a curiosity if you will.
“Further evidence that abrupt climate change can have enormous life-affecting consequences over a relatively short space of time, whatever its cause.”
That was never debated. What has been and is constantly debated is the false ideas that there is a “control knob” and the “science is settled” and “climate change” causes this and that and the other.
It is also contested that averaging averages of anomalies is valid for an intensive property.
If one takes snippets of a sine wave, one can demonstrated any trendline one desires.
A couple hundred million years ago, pretty much the whole planet was covered in glaciers, and life struggled.
A few million years later the planet was tropical and forests covered Antarctica and life flourished.
This proves that changes in climate can impact life, and that warm is better than cold, for life.
“If one takes snippets of a sine wave, one can demonstrated any trendline one desires.”
Here’s one for you..
What do you think the calculated trend of this section of sign wave is?
Desperation on steroids.
Proof that the world has been warmer without an increase in CO2, and that this warmer temperature was entirely beneficial, is twisted into another claim that the small changes in CO2 levels that we currently enjoy are going to kill us all.
Challenge, prove what caused the warmer temperatures 5000 to 9000 years ago.
Then prove that whatever caused the warmer temperatures back then, is not in play now.
My perfectly reasonable comments.. and just one of them.. still being CENSORED.
DISGUSTING
I’ve told you that your use of the term “no evidence” constitutes harassment as you’ve probably said it to the same users thousands of times.
Oh dear.. really has got to a pathetic stage, hasn’t it !!
Suggesting there is no evidence.. is somehow, harassment.
How ridiculous is that. 🙂
It is noted that they still haven’t produced any evidence. !!
(bet you censor this)
I’ve told you this multiple times, I’ve written an article about it.
Your pathetic, idiotic, and I do mean idiotic, idea of what constitutes evidence is an embarrassment to this side of the debate.
I don’t want to ban you but I sure wish you would comment less.
The Denizova cave may alsoo give us a hint about warmer temperatures 30-40K years ago..
The average temperature there is 0 C
and it is not very likely that such a cold place is being populated for millenias,
therefore a warmer climate was probably the reason that the cave was used
until climate and cavegot too cold.
It’s not entirely clear to me why the title includes “Unexpected Climate Revealed” as I thought the Holocene Warm Period was well understood. I didn’t read the paper, but did read the image.It may be they didn’t expect to find remains of birds. Or perhaps they expected to find the warm conditions but expected to find it was also dry.
A classic example of –
“climate is what we expect, but weather is what we get”
But, but, but, we can control the temperature to +/- 0.0001 C if only we stop using carbon based fuels! 😉
This is hardly news. It is a very small extension of the known conditions that existed at this latitude across the Sahara at this time, when the insolation effect of Earth’s 23Ka orbital precession cycle was at its maximum effect, so the NH was facing the Sun at the perihelion of its orbital eccentricity. Basic MIlankovotch cycle fact. Established data sets. Nothing new to see here. There are theories as to how this worked, such as the Monsson happening further North when it was hotter in the NH, but it was defo wetter in this region when it was at its Holocene hottest. Something about the Hadley cell?
Now check our Fuerteventura on the globe.
It is so easy for acadedic parasites on the taxpayer to publish old reworked stuff at taxpayers expense as if its new science, because most people don’t know what the old science was, or forget it after this weeks edition of their favourite TV show. https://www.geomar.de/en/news/article/rapid-end-of-the-green-sahara-8000-years-ago. It seems the problem with the public’s gasp of science is that the public has none. Hence our problem. You can send them to University, but you can’t make them think. IMO.
Your witness……
In the Book of Job there are described the Behemoth or Hippopotamus and the Leviathan or Nile Crocodile, both of which apparently living in the Levant. Was the area’s climate in 850 BC sufficiently wet to support the habitat for these two animals?