Composite surface temperature history from simultaneous inversion of borehole temperatures in western Canadian plains

Functional space inversions (FSI) of precise temperature logs from wells located in low conductivity clastic sediments of the western Canadian Sedimentary Basin show evidence of extensive, recent ground surface temperature (GST) warming. Simultaneous inversion of the data, as well as averaging of the individual site reconstructions, indicate that this high magnitude of GST warming exceeds over two times that of globally averaged GSTʹs [Science 282 (1998) 279] and is significantly higher than that of surface temperature histories based on instrumental records and tree ring reconstruction in northern and western Canada [Holocene 7 (1997) 375; Science 278 (1997) 1251; Clim. Res. 12 (1999) 39].