title: Climate variability and change

text: The energy moving through Earth's climate system finds expression in weather, varying on geographic scales and time. Long-term averages and variability of weather in a region constitute the region's climate. Such changes can be the result of "internal variability", when natural processes inherent to the various parts of the climate system alter the distribution of energy. Examples include variability in ocean basins such as the Pacific decadal oscillation and Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Climate variability can also result from "external forcing", when events outside of the climate system's components produce changes within the system. Examples include changes in solar output and volcanism.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Climate variability has consequences for sea level changes, plant life, and mass extinctions; it also affects human societies.


title: Climate variability and change

text: "Climate variability" is the term to describe variations in the mean state and other characteristics of climate (such as chances or possibility of extreme weather, etc.) "on all spatial and temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events." Some of the variability does not appear to be caused by known systems and occurs at seemingly random times. Such variability is called "random variability" or "noise". On the other hand, periodic variability occurs relatively regularly and in distinct modes of variability or climate patterns.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The term "climate change" is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change (also known as global warming). Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes.


title: Climate variability and change

text: In this sense, the term climate change has become synonymous with anthropogenic global warming. Within scientific journals, global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas levels affect.


title: Climate variability and change

text: A related term, "climatic change", was proposed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1966 to encompass all forms of climatic variability on time-scales longer than 10 years, but regardless of cause. During the 1970s, the term climate change replaced climatic change to focus on anthropogenic causes, as it became clear that human activities had a potential to drastically alter the climate. Climate change was incorporated in the title of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate change is now used as both a technical description of the process, as well as a noun used to describe the problem.


title: Climate variability and change

text: On the broadest scale, the rate at which energy is received from the Sun and the rate at which it is lost to space determine the equilibrium temperature and climate of Earth. This energy is distributed around the globe by winds, ocean currents, and other mechanisms to affect the climates of different regions.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or "forcing mechanisms". These include processes such as variations in solar radiation, variations in the Earth's orbit, variations in the albedo or reflectivity of the continents, atmosphere, and oceans, mountain-building and continental drift and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. External forcing can be either anthropogenic (e.g. increased emissions of greenhouse gases and dust) or natural (e.g., changes in solar output, the Earth's orbit, volcano eruptions). There are a variety of climate change feedbacks that can either amplify or diminish the initial forcing. There are also key thresholds which when exceeded can produce rapid or irreversible change.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Some parts of the climate system, such as the oceans and ice caps, respond more slowly in reaction to climate forcings, while others respond more quickly. An example of fast change is the atmospheric cooling after a volcanic eruption, when volcanic ash reflects sunlight. Thermal expansion of ocean water after atmospheric warming is slow, and can take thousands of years. A combination is also possible, e.g., sudden loss of albedo in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice melts, followed by more gradual thermal expansion of the water.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Climate variability can also occur due to internal processes. Internal unforced processes often involve changes in the distribution of energy in the ocean and atmosphere, for instance, changes in the thermohaline circulation.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Climatic changes due to internal variability sometimes occur in cycles or oscillations. For other types of natural climatic change, we cannot predict when it happens; the change is called "random" or "stochastic". From a climate perspective, the weather can be considered random. If there are little clouds in a particular year, there is an energy imbalance and extra heat can be absorbed by the oceans. Due to climate inertia, this signal can be 'stored' in the ocean and be expressed as variability on longer time scales than the original weather disturbances. If the weather disturbances are completely random, occurring as white noise, the inertia of glaciers or oceans can transform this into climate changes where longer-duration oscillations are also larger oscillations, a phenomenon called red noise. Many climate changes have a random aspect and a cyclical aspect. This behavior is dubbed "stochastic resonance". Half of the 2021 Nobel prize on physics was awarded for this work to Klaus Hasselmann jointly with Syukuro Manabe for related work on climate modelling. While Giorgio Parisi who with collaborators introduced the concept of stochastic resonance was awarded the other half but mainly for work on theoretical physics.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The ocean and atmosphere can work together to spontaneously generate internal climate variability that can persist for years to decades at a time. These variations can affect global average surface temperature by redistributing heat between the deep ocean and the atmosphere and/or by altering the cloud/water vapor/sea ice distribution which can affect the total energy budget of the Earth.


title: Climate variability and change

text: A "climate oscillation" or "climate cycle" is any recurring cyclical oscillation within global or regional climate. They are quasiperiodic (not perfectly periodic), so a Fourier analysis of the data does not have sharp peaks in the spectrum. Many oscillations on different time-scales have been found or hypothesized:


title: Climate variability and change

text: The oceanic aspects of climate variability can generate variability on centennial timescales due to the ocean having hundreds of times more mass than in the atmosphere, and thus very high thermal inertia. For example, alterations to ocean processes such as thermohaline circulation play a key role in redistributing heat in the world's oceans.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Ocean currents transport a lot of energy from the warm tropical regions to the colder polar regions. Changes occurring around the last ice age (in technical terms, the last glacial) show that the circulation is the North Atlantic can change suddenly and substantially, leading to global climate changes, even though the total amount of energy coming into the climate system didn't change much. These large changes may have come from so called Heinrich events where internal instability of ice sheets caused huge ice bergs to be released into the ocean. When the ice sheet melts, the resulting water is very low in salt and cold, driving changes in circulation.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Life affects climate through its role in the carbon and water cycles and through such mechanisms as albedo, evapotranspiration, cloud formation, and weathering. Examples of how life may have affected past climate include:


title: Climate variability and change

text: Whereas greenhouse gases released by the biosphere is often seen as a feedback or internal climate process, greenhouse gases emitted from volcanoes are typically classified as external by climatologists. Greenhouse gases, such as , methane and nitrous oxide, heat the climate system by trapping infrared light. Volcanoes are also part of the extended carbon cycle. Over very long (geological) time periods, they release carbon dioxide from the Earth's crust and mantle, counteracting the uptake by sedimentary rocks and other geological carbon dioxide sinks.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Since the industrial revolution, humanity has been adding to greenhouse gases by emitting CO from fossil fuel combustion, changing land use through deforestation, and has further altered the climate with aerosols (particulate matter in the atmosphere), release of trace gases (e.g. nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, or methane). Other factors, including land use, ozone depletion, animal husbandry (ruminant animals such as cattle produce methane), and deforestation, also play a role.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The US Geological Survey estimates are that volcanic emissions are at a much lower level than the effects of current human activities, which generate 100–300 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes. The annual amount put out by human activities may be greater than the amount released by supereruptions, the most recent of which was the Toba eruption in Indonesia 74,000 years ago.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Slight variations in Earth's motion lead to changes in the seasonal distribution of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface and how it is distributed across the globe. There is very little change to the area-averaged annually averaged sunshine; but there can be strong changes in the geographical and seasonal distribution. The three types of kinematic change are variations in Earth's eccentricity, changes in the tilt angle of Earth's axis of rotation, and precession of Earth's axis. Combined, these produce Milankovitch cycles which affect climate and are notable for their correlation to glacial and interglacial periods, their correlation with the advance and retreat of the Sahara, and for their appearance in the stratigraphic record.


title: Climate variability and change

text: During the glacial cycles, there was a high correlation between concentrations and temperatures. Early studies indicated that concentrations lagged temperatures, but it has become clear that this isn't always the case. When ocean temperatures increase, the solubility of decreases so that it is released from the ocean. The exchange of between the air and the ocean can also be impacted by further aspects of climatic change. These and other self-reinforcing processes allow small changes in Earth's motion to have a large effect on climate.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The Sun is the predominant source of energy input to the Earth's climate system. Other sources include geothermal energy from the Earth's core, tidal energy from the Moon and heat from the decay of radioactive compounds. Both long term variations in solar intensity are known to affect global climate. Solar output varies on shorter time scales, including the 11-year solar cycle and longer-term modulations. Correlation between sunspots and climate and tenuous at best.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Three to four billion years ago, the Sun emitted only 75% as much power as it does today. If the atmospheric composition had been the same as today, liquid water should not have existed on the Earth's surface. However, there is evidence for the presence of water on the early Earth, in the Hadean and Archean eons, leading to what is known as the faint young Sun paradox. Hypothesized solutions to this paradox include a vastly different atmosphere, with much higher concentrations of greenhouse gases than currently exist. Over the following approximately 4 billion years, the energy output of the Sun increased. Over the next five billion years, the Sun's ultimate death as it becomes a red giant and then a white dwarf will have large effects on climate, with the red giant phase possibly ending any life on Earth that survives until that time.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The eruptions considered to be large enough to affect the Earth's climate on a scale of more than 1 year are the ones that inject over 100,000 tons of SO into the stratosphere. This is due to the optical properties of SO and sulfate aerosols, which strongly absorb or scatter solar radiation, creating a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. On average, such eruptions occur several times per century, and cause cooling (by partially blocking the transmission of solar radiation to the Earth's surface) for a period of several years. Although volcanoes are technically part of the lithosphere, which itself is part of the climate system, the IPCC explicitly defines volcanism as an external forcing agent.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Notable eruptions in the historical records are the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo which lowered global temperatures by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) for up to three years, and the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora causing the Year Without a Summer.


title: Climate variability and change

text: At a larger scale—a few times every 50 million to 100 million years—the eruption of large igneous provinces brings large quantities of igneous rock from the mantle and lithosphere to the Earth's surface. Carbon dioxide in the rock is then released into the atmosphere.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Over the course of millions of years, the motion of tectonic plates reconfigures global land and ocean areas and generates topography. This can affect both global and local patterns of climate and atmosphere-ocean circulation.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The position of the continents determines the geometry of the oceans and therefore influences patterns of ocean circulation. The locations of the seas are important in controlling the transfer of heat and moisture across the globe, and therefore, in determining global climate. A recent example of tectonic control on ocean circulation is the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 5 million years ago, which shut off direct mixing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This strongly affected the ocean dynamics of what is now the Gulf Stream and may have led to Northern Hemisphere ice cover. During the Carboniferous period, about 300 to 360 million years ago, plate tectonics may have triggered large-scale storage of carbon and increased glaciation. Geologic evidence points to a "megamonsoonal" circulation pattern during the time of the supercontinent Pangaea, and climate modeling suggests that the existence of the supercontinent was conducive to the establishment of monsoons.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The size of continents is also important. Because of the stabilizing effect of the oceans on temperature, yearly temperature variations are generally lower in coastal areas than they are inland. A larger supercontinent will therefore have more area in which climate is strongly seasonal than will several smaller continents or islands.


title: Climate variability and change

text: It has been postulated that ionized particles known as cosmic rays could impact cloud cover and thereby the climate. As the sun shields the Earth from these particles, changes in solar activity were hypothesized to influence climate indirectly as well. To test the hypothesis, CERN designed the CLOUD experiment, which showed the effect of cosmic rays is too weak to influence climate noticeably.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Evidence exists that the Chicxulub asteroid impact some 66 million years ago had severely affected the Earth's climate. Large quantities of sulfate aerosols were kicked up into the atmosphere, decreasing global temperatures by up to 26 °C and producing sub-freezing temperatures for a period of 3–16 years. The recovery time for this event took more than 30 years. The large-scale use of nuclear weapons has also been investigated for its impact on the climate. The hypothesis is that soot released by large-scale fires blocks a significant fraction of sunlight for as much as a year, leading to a sharp drop in temperatures for a few years. This possible event is described as nuclear winter.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Humans' use of land impact how much sunlight the surface reflects and the concentration of dust. Cloud formation is not only influenced by how much water is in the air and the temperature, but also by the amount of aerosols in the air such as dust. Globally, more dust is available if there are many regions with dry soils, little vegetation and strong winds.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Paleoclimatology is the study of changes in climate through the entire history of Earth. It uses a variety of proxy methods from the Earth and life sciences to obtain data preserved within things such as rocks, sediments, ice sheets, tree rings, corals, shells, and microfossils. It then uses the records to determine the past states of the Earth's various climate regions and its atmospheric system. Direct measurements give a more complete overview of climate variability.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Climate changes that occurred after the widespread deployment of measuring devices can be observed directly. Reasonably complete global records of surface temperature are available beginning from the mid-late 19th century. Further observations are derived indirectly from historical documents. Satellite cloud and precipitation data has been available since the 1970s.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Historical climatology is the study of historical changes in climate and their effect on human history and development. The primary sources include written records such as sagas, chronicles, maps and local history literature as well as pictorial representations such as paintings, drawings and even rock art. Climate variability in the recent past may be derived from changes in settlement and agricultural patterns. Archaeological evidence, oral history and historical documents can offer insights into past changes in the climate. Changes in climate have been linked to the rise and the collapse of various civilizations.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Various archives of past climate are present in rocks, trees and fossils. From these archives, indirect measures of climate, so-called proxies, can be derived. Quantification of climatological variation of precipitation in prior centuries and epochs is less complete but approximated using proxies such as marine sediments, ice cores, cave stalagmites, and tree rings. Stress, too little precipitation or unsuitable temperatures, can alter the growth rate of trees, which allows scientists to infer climate trends by analyzing the growth rate of tree rings. This branch of science studying this called dendroclimatology. Glaciers leave behind moraines that contain a wealth of material—including organic matter, quartz, and potassium that may be dated—recording the periods in which a glacier advanced and retreated.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Analysis of ice in cores drilled from an ice sheet such as the Antarctic ice sheet, can be used to show a link between temperature and global sea level variations. The air trapped in bubbles in the ice can also reveal the CO variations of the atmosphere from the distant past, well before modern environmental influences. The study of these ice cores has been a significant indicator of the changes in CO over many millennia, and continues to provide valuable information about the differences between ancient and modern atmospheric conditions. The O/O ratio in calcite and ice core samples used to deduce ocean temperature in the distant past is an example of a temperature proxy method.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The remnants of plants, and specifically pollen, are also used to study climatic change. Plant distributions vary under different climate conditions. Different groups of plants have pollen with distinctive shapes and surface textures, and since the outer surface of pollen is composed of a very resilient material, they resist decay. Changes in the type of pollen found in different layers of sediment indicate changes in plant communities. These changes are often a sign of a changing climate. As an example, pollen studies have been used to track changing vegetation patterns throughout the Quaternary glaciations and especially since the last glacial maximum. Remains of beetles are common in freshwater and land sediments. Different species of beetles tend to be found under different climatic conditions. Given the extensive lineage of beetles whose genetic makeup has not altered significantly over the millennia, knowledge of the present climatic range of the different species, and the age of the sediments in which remains are found, past climatic conditions may be inferred.


title: Climate variability and change

text: One difficulty in detecting climate cycles is that the Earth's climate has been changing in non-cyclic ways over most paleoclimatological timescales. Currently we are in a period of anthropogenic global warming. In a larger timeframe, the Earth is emerging from the latest ice age, cooling from the Holocene climatic optimum and warming from the "Little Ice Age", which means that climate has been constantly changing over the last 15,000 years or so. During warm periods, temperature fluctuations are often of a lesser amplitude. The Pleistocene period, dominated by repeated glaciations, developed out of more stable conditions in the Miocene and Pliocene climate. Holocene climate has been relatively stable. All of these changes complicate the task of looking for cyclical behavior in the climate.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Positive feedback, negative feedback, and ecological inertia from the land-ocean-atmosphere system often attenuate or reverse smaller effects, whether from orbital forcings, solar variations or changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases. Certain feedbacks involving processes such as clouds are also uncertain; for contrails, natural cirrus clouds, oceanic dimethyl sulfide and a land-based equivalent, competing theories exist concerning effects on climatic temperatures, for example contrasting the Iris hypothesis and CLAW hypothesis.


title: Climate variability and change

text: A change in the type, distribution and coverage of vegetation may occur given a change in the climate. Some changes in climate may result in increased precipitation and warmth, resulting in improved plant growth and the subsequent sequestration of airborne CO. The effects are expected to affect the rate of many natural cycles like plant litter decomposition rates. A gradual increase in warmth in a region will lead to earlier flowering and fruiting times, driving a change in the timing of life cycles of dependent organisms. Conversely, cold will cause plant bio-cycles to lag.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Larger, faster or more radical changes, however, may result in vegetation stress, rapid plant loss and desertification in certain circumstances. An example of this occurred during the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse (CRC), an extinction event 300 million years ago. At this time vast rainforests covered the equatorial region of Europe and America. Climate change devastated these tropical rainforests, abruptly fragmenting the habitat into isolated 'islands' and causing the extinction of many plant and animal species.


title: Climate variability and change

text: One of the most important ways animals can deal with climatic change is migration to warmer or colder regions. On a longer timescale, evolution makes ecosystems including animals better adapted to a new climate. Rapid or large climate change can cause mass extinctions when creatures are stretched too far to be able to adapt.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Collapses of past civilizations such as the Maya may be related to cycles of precipitation, especially drought, that in this example also correlates to the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool. Around 70 000 years ago the Toba supervolcano eruption created an especially cold period during the ice age, leading to a possible genetic bottleneck in human populations.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Glaciers are considered among the most sensitive indicators of a changing climate. Their size is determined by a mass balance between snow input and melt output. As temperatures increase, glaciers retreat unless snow precipitation increases to make up for the additional melt. Glaciers grow and shrink due both to natural variability and external forcings. Variability in temperature, precipitation and hydrology can strongly determine the evolution of a glacier in a particular season.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The most significant climate processes since the middle to late Pliocene (approximately 3 million years ago) are the glacial and interglacial cycles. The present interglacial period (the Holocene) has lasted about 11,700 years. Shaped by orbital variations, responses such as the rise and fall of continental ice sheets and significant sea-level changes helped create the climate. Other changes, including Heinrich events, Dansgaard–Oeschger events and the Younger Dryas, however, illustrate how glacial variations may also influence climate without the orbital forcing.


title: Climate variability and change

text: During the Last Glacial Maximum, some 25,000 years ago, sea levels were roughly 130 m lower than today. The deglaciation afterwards was characterized by rapid sea level change. In the early Pliocene, global temperatures were 1–2˚C warmer than the present temperature, yet sea level was 15–25 meters higher than today.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Sea ice plays an important role in Earth's climate as it affects the total amount of sunlight that is reflected away from the Earth. In the past, the Earth's oceans have been almost entirely covered by sea ice on a number of occasions, when the Earth was in a so-called Snowball Earth state, and completely ice-free in periods of warm climate. When there is a lot of sea ice present globally, especially in the tropics and subtropics, the climate is more sensitive to forcings as the ice–albedo feedback is very strong.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Various climate forcings are typically in flux throughout geologic time, and some processes of the Earth's temperature may be self-regulating. For example, during the Snowball Earth period, large glacial ice sheets spanned to Earth's equator, covering nearly its entire surface, and very high albedo created extremely low temperatures, while the accumulation of snow and ice likely removed carbon dioxide through atmospheric deposition. However, the absence of plant cover to absorb atmospheric CO emitted by volcanoes meant that the greenhouse gas could accumulate in the atmosphere. There was also an absence of exposed silicate rocks, which use CO when they undergo weathering. This created a warming that later melted the ice and brought Earth's temperature back up.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a time period with more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event. This climate event occurred at the time boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene geological epochs. During the event large amounts of methane was released, a potent greenhouse gas. The PETM represents a "case study" for modern climate change as in the greenhouse gases were released in a geologically relatively short amount of time. During the PETM, a mass extinction of organisms in the deep ocean took place.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Throughout the Cenozoic, multiple climate forcings led to warming and cooling of the atmosphere, which led to the early formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, subsequent melting, and its later reglaciation. The temperature changes occurred somewhat suddenly, at carbon dioxide concentrations of about 600–760 ppm and temperatures approximately 4 °C warmer than today. During the Pleistocene, cycles of glaciations and interglacials occurred on cycles of roughly 100,000 years, but may stay longer within an interglacial when orbital eccentricity approaches zero, as during the current interglacial. Previous interglacials such as the Eemian phase created temperatures higher than today, higher sea levels, and some partial melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Climatological temperatures substantially affect cloud cover and precipitation. At lower temperatures, air can hold less water vapour, which can lead to decreased precipitation. During the Last Glacial Maximum of 18,000 years ago, thermal-driven evaporation from the oceans onto continental landmasses was low, causing large areas of extreme desert, including polar deserts (cold but with low rates of cloud cover and precipitation). In contrast, the world's climate was cloudier and wetter than today near the start of the warm Atlantic Period of 8000 years ago.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The Holocene is characterized by a long-term cooling starting after the Holocene Optimum, when temperatures were probably only just below current temperatures (second decade of the 21st century), and a strong African Monsoon created grassland conditions in the Sahara during the Neolithic Subpluvial. Since that time, several cooling events have occurred, including:


title: Climate variability and change

text: Certain effects have occurred during these cycles. For example, during the Medieval Warm Period, the American Midwest was in drought, including the Sand Hills of Nebraska which were active sand dunes. The black death plague of "Yersinia pestis" also occurred during Medieval temperature fluctuations, and may be related to changing climates.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Solar activity may have contributed to part of the modern warming that peaked in the 1930s. However, solar cycles fail to account for warming observed since the 1980s to the present day . Events such as the opening of the Northwest Passage and recent record low ice minima of the modern Arctic shrinkage have not taken place for at least several centuries, as early explorers were all unable to make an Arctic crossing, even in summer. Shifts in biomes and habitat ranges are also unprecedented, occurring at rates that do not coincide with known climate oscillations .


title: Climate variability and change

text: As a consequence of humans emitting greenhouse gases, global surface temperatures have started rising. Global warming is an aspect of modern climate change, a term that also includes the observed changes in precipitation, storm tracks and cloudiness. As a consequence, glaciers worldwide have been found to be shrinking significantly. Land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland have been losing mass since 2002 and have seen an acceleration of ice mass loss since 2009. Global sea levels have been rising as a consequence of thermal expansion and ice melt. The decline in Arctic sea ice, both in extent and thickness, over the last several decades is further evidence for rapid climate change.


title: Climate variability and change

text: In addition to global climate variability and global climate change over time, numerous climatic variations occur contemporaneously across different physical regions.


title: Climate variability and change

text: The oceans' absorption of about 90% of excess heat has helped to cause land surface temperatures to grow more rapidly than sea surface temperatures. The Northern Hemisphere, having a larger landmass-to-ocean ratio than the Southern Hemisphere, shows greater average temperature increases. Variations across different latitude bands also reflect this divergence in average temperature increase, with the temperature increase of northern extratropics exceeding that of the tropics, which in turn exceeds that of the southern extratropics.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Upper regions of the atmosphere have been cooling contemporaneously with a warming in the lower atmosphere, confirming the action of the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Observed regional climatic variations confirm predictions concerning ongoing changes, for example, by contrasting (smoother) year-to-year global variations with (more volatile) year-to-year variations in localized regions. Conversely, comparing different regions' warming patterns to their respective historical variabilities, allows the raw magnitudes of temperature changes to be placed in the perspective of what is normal variability for each region.


title: Climate variability and change

text: Regional variability observations permit study of regionalized climate tipping points such as rainforest loss, ice sheet and sea ice melt, and permafrost thawing. Such distinctions underlie research into a possible global cascade of tipping points.


title: Justin Briner

text: Justin Briner is an American voice actor. He has provided voices for English-language versions of Japanese anime films and television series with Funimation. He is best known for his roles as Izuku "Deku" Midoriya in "My Hero Academia", Mikaela Hyakuya in "Seraph of the End", Maki Katsuragi in "Stars Align", Qwenthur Barbotage in "Heavy Object", Alfonso San Valiante in "", Luck Voltia in "Black Clover", Kensuke Hanasaki in "Trickster," Ichi in the game "Cibele", Shō Kusakabe from "Fire Force" and Hanako/Amane Yugi from "Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun".


title: Justin Briner

text: Justin Briner was born and raised in Maryland. He has a younger sister, Hayley Briner. He attended the University of North Texas and studied theater prior to finding voice acting work. In 2015, he starred as the voice of Mikaela Hyakuya, one of the two main teenage orphans who turns into a vampire in the anime series "Seraph of the End", which was released through Funimation's broadcast dub service. He voiced Elam, a boy who serves Arslan's main party member Narsus, in "The Heroic Legend of Arslan". He voiced main protagonist Qwenthur Barbotage in the mech-themed anime show "Heavy Object". A reviewer wrote on Anime UK News that she was impressed with the quality of the dub and that Briner and fellow voice actor Micah Solusod "have a lot to do with how instantly likably the characters come across, which helps carry the whole show".


title: Justin Briner

text: In video games, Briner voiced Ichi, the love interest of the main character, in "Cibele", an indie video game about developing an online relationship. "Cibele" won a Nuovo Award at 2016 Independent Games Festival, and made Briner's name known in mainstream news.


title: Justin Briner

text: In "My Hero Academia", Briner voiced the lead character Izuku Midoriya, a middle school student who was not born with superhero powers but lives in a superhero-based world, and is recruited to enroll in a school for superheroes. Alex Osborn of IGN described his performance as excellent and standout, while Tom Speelman of Polygon noted that he and his Japanese counterpart "nail the optimistic nerdiness and heroic attitude" with Briner "channeling a bit of Morty Smith for good measure". The series has run for six seasons, with Briner and fellow voice actor Christopher Sabat doing panels and interviews at anime conventions including Anime Expo and San Diego Comic-Con regarding their work on the show.


title: Justin Briner

text: Briner has continued to voice lead and main characters in other anime shows. He voiced the crown prince in the first "" series, which Robert Prentice of Three If By Space described the English cast "a great lineup", in particular highlighting Briner. In 2016, voiced Lance in the anime adaptation of "Puzzle & Dragons X," and Nasu no Yoichi in the alternate history anime "Drifters". In the prison comedy "Nanbaka", his vocal performance was described as "more awestruck and childlike" than that of the original Japanese counterpart. Anne Laurenroth of Anime News Network found Briner's portrayal of Kensuke Hanasaki in "Trickster" helped prevent his pre-backstory character from getting overly annoying. Briner has also been involved in the production side as the head writer on the ADR script for "".


title: Justin Briner

text: In 2017, he voiced lead characters Haruki Mishima in "Convenience Store Boy Friends", Tazuna Takatsuki in "Hand Shakers", and Ernesti "Eru" Echavalier in "Knight's & Magic". In the same year, he landed the lead role of Justice "Seigi" Akatsuka in "Taboo Tattoo".


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Gary Patrick Angelo Dell'Abate (born March 14, 1961), also known by the nickname Baba Booey, is an American radio producer who has been the executive producer of "The Howard Stern Show" since 1984. His autobiography, "They Call Me Baba Booey", was released on November 2, 2010.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Dell'Abate was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and raised in Uniondale, New York, on Long Island. He comes from a large Italian-American family. His father, Salvatore, was a salesman for Häagen-Dazs ice cream, while his mother, Ellen (née Cotroneo) was a food demonstrator at Macy's in New York City and Fortunoff on Long Island. Dell'Abate attended Adelphi University, receiving the Richard F. Clemo Award in his senior year, and he interned at several radio stations, including WLIR. While working with Roz Frank, a traffic reporter on WNBC, he came into contact with Howard Stern.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Dell'Abate has worked on "The Howard Stern Show" since September 4, 1984: originally on 66 WNBC, then syndicated through K-Rock in New York City, and later broadcast on Sirius XM Radio. Dell'Abate was originally hired for $150 a week, with duties including getting Stern's lunch and scheduling guests for the show.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Previously nicknamed "Boy-Gary" (Howard called his college roommate Dr. Lew Weinstein "boy" when giving an order; preceded by "Boy" Lee Davis at WNBC), Dell'Abate's "Baba Booey" moniker originated on "The Howard Stern Show" on July 26, 1990, after telling a story of his prized collection of animation cels. In the course of discussing a Quick Draw McGraw cel he might purchase, he misstated the name of McGraw's sidekick Baba Looey as "Baba Booey". As is typical of the show, the rest of the cast "goofed" on his mistake, becoming especially merciless since he was mulling the purchase of a cel of a character without even knowing the character's correct name. Speaking to Stern at the end of the show, Dell'Abate said, "I think we've taken this as far as it will go." Stern replied, "Gary, we've only scratched the surface of this." Dell'Abate remains Baba Booey to this day. Eventually, he titled his autobiography "They Call Me Baba Booey". Dell'Abate later recalled that when he watched the cartoon as a child, Quick Draw would often call Baba Looey "Baba Boy", usually in frantic moments ("Help me, Baba Boy!"). Quick Draw's drawn-out pronunciation of "boy" often sounded like "booey", which led Dell'Abate to think that the character's name was actually "Baba Booey".


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: "Baba Booey" as a term has become a mantra for fans of "The Howard Stern Show" and is often used during prank calls to live network television or radio broadcasts; for example, a call made by a prank caller nicknamed "Maury from Brooklyn" to ABC News during the low-speed police chase of O. J. Simpson's Ford Bronco through the streets of Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, signed off with "And Baba Booey to y'all!" Sportscaster Al Michaels explained to anchor Peter Jennings the significance of the phrase. In the 2012 Olympics, Freestyle wrestler Jake Herbert yelled "Baba Booey" as the camera panned over Team USA during the opening ceremony. Since then it has become a trend in sporting events where concentration and silence are expected, for spectators to shout "Baba Booey!" as in the case of the PGA Tour as soon as a golfer has completed his swing.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Dell'Abate has been married since 1992 to Mary Dell'Abate (née Caracciolo). They have two sons, Lucas and Jackson.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: After Dell'Abate's brother Steven died of AIDS in January 1991, Dell'Abate became a supporter of LIFEbeat: The Music Industry Fights AIDS and served as the charity's president.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Dell'Abate wrote his autobiography, "They Call Me Baba Booey", which was a "New York Times" best seller. It debuted at #6 on the "NY Times" Best Seller list in November 2010. In the book, Dell'Abate tells the story of his brother's death from AIDS, his mother's struggle with depression as well as his rise to executive producer of "The Howard Stern Show".


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: Dell'Abate is an avid New York Mets fan, and, on May 9, 2009, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Mets game. The pitch did not go well, as it landed down the third-base line and hit an umpire. He later attended the 2015 World Series with fellow "Howard Stern Show" co-worker Richard Christy (who is a Kansas City Royals fan). Dell'Abate is also a fan of the New York Islanders hockey team, and was interviewed for the 2012 book, "Dynasty: The Oral History of the New York Islanders, 1972–1984", by author Greg Prato. Dell'Abate's thoughts and memories of following the Islanders (he also interned for the television station that broadcast the team's games at the time, SportsChannel) are featured throughout the book, as well as several photos of Dell'Abate with Islanders players at a Stanley Cup victory parade in 1980.


title: Gary Dell'Abate

text: On March 14, 2011, Dell'Abate was appointed to the Greenwich, Connecticut, Board of Parks and Recreation with a 119–64 vote margin. The Greenwich Town Meeting unanimously reappointed Dell'Abate to the Board on June 9, 2014.


title: Tophet

text: In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth (; ; ) is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch. The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah, although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted.


title: Tophet

text: Most scholars agree that the ritual performed at the tophet was child sacrifice, and they connect it to similar episodes throughout the Bible and recorded in Phoenicia (whose inhabitants were referred to as Canaanites in the Bible) and Carthage by Hellenistic sources. There is disagreement about whether the sacrifices were offered to a god named "Moloch". Based on Phoenician and Carthaginian inscriptions, a growing number of scholars believe that the word "moloch" refers to the type of sacrifice rather than a deity. There is currently a dispute as to whether these sacrifices were dedicated to Yahweh rather than a foreign deity.


title: Tophet

text: Archaeologists have applied the term "tophet" to large cemeteries of children found at Carthaginian sites that have traditionally been believed to house the victims of child sacrifice, as described by Hellenistic and biblical sources. This interpretation is controversial, with some scholars arguing that the tophets may have been children's cemeteries, rejecting Hellenistic sources as anti-Carthaginian propaganda. Others argue that not all burials in the tophet were sacrifices.


title: Tophet

text: There is no consensus on the etymology of tophet, a word which only occurs eight times in the Masoretic Text. The word may be derived from the Aramaic word meaning "hearth", "fireplace", or "roaster", a proposal first made by William Robertson Smith in 1887. Some have suggested that the word has been altered via using the vocalization of "shame." Others derive the word from the Hebrew root "to set (on fire)", cognate with Ugaritic "to set." A new proposal has been made to interpret the term as "place of vow" by Robert M. Kerr.


title: Tophet

text: The Talmud (Eruvin 19a) and Jerome derive the name from a Hebrew verb meaning "to seduce". The historically most significant etymology, followed by both Jewish and Christian exegetes until the modern period, was made by the 11th-century CE rabbi Rashi, who derived the term from Hebrew "drum," claiming that the drums were beaten during the sacrifice to Moloch, deriving his ideas from Plutarch's description of Carthaginian sacrifice. This derivation is, however, morphologically impossible.


title: Tophet

text: The tophet is attested 8 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly to designate a place of ritual fire or burning, but sometimes as a place name. The connection to ritual fire is made explicit in , ; and . In 2 Kings, King Josiah The text includes the destruction of the Tophet among Josiah's other removal of "deviant" religious practices from Israel as part of a far reaching religious reform. However, the continued condemnation of both the tophet and related practices by prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel suggests that the practice may have continued after Josiah's reform, with a mention of the tophet by Isaiah suggesting it may have even continued after the Babylonian exile. Prior to Josiah's reform, the ritual of passing a child through the fire is mentioned, without specifying that it took place at the tophet, as having been performed by the Israelite kings Ahaz and Manasseh:


title: Tophet

text: Both kings perform the sacrifices when faced with the prospect of wars. The sacrifices appear to have been to Yahweh, the god of Israel, and to have been performed in the tophet.


title: Tophet

text: The tophet is condemned repeatedly by name in the Book of Jeremiah, and the term is especially associated with that book of the bible. An example is at :


title: Tophet

text: P. Xella argues that no fewer than twenty-five passages in the Hebrew Bible show the Israelites and Canaanites sacrificing their children, including passages in Deuteronomy, (Dt. 12:13, 18:10), Leviticus (Lev. 18:21, 20:2-5), 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Ezra, Psalm 106, and the Book of Job. In , king Mesha of Moab burns his first-born son as an offering while besieged by the Israelites:


title: Tophet

text: This act has been compared with Greco-Roman sources discussing the Phoenicians and Carthaginians engaging in the same or a similar practice in times of danger (see below). It appears to have been performed for the Moabite god Kemosh.


title: Tophet

text: There is no archaeological evidence for the Tophet at Jerusalem, so that we are reliant on the biblical descriptions to understand it. Archaeology has not yet securely identified any Tophets in the Levant, but there is other evidence for child sacrifice there. Ancient Egyptian inscriptions from the second millennium BCE attest the practice in the Levant. A late 8th-century BCE Phoenician inscription from İnçirli in Turkey may indicate that first born sons were sacrificed there along with sheep and horses. The sacrifice of first-born sons in times of crisis appears to be dealt with at length in the inscription, although the precise context is unclear.


title: Tophet

text: Greco-Roman sources also reference child sacrifice, such as an attempt at Tyre to revive a custom of sacrificing a boy during Alexander the Great's Siege of Tyre in 332 BCE, recorded by first century CE Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus. The church historian Eusebius (3rd century CE) quotes from Philo of Byblos's Phoenician history that:


title: Tophet

text: Although a "minority of scholars" has argued that the tophet ritual described in the Bible was a harmless activity that did not involve sacrificing any children, the majority of scholars agree that the Bible depicts human sacrifice as occurring at the tophet. Modern scholarship has described sacrifice at the Tophet as a "mulk" or "mlk" sacrifice. The term appears to derive from a verb meaning "presentation as an offering" from the root "to offer, present" and found in Phoenician and Carthaginian inscriptions in the phrases "sacrifice a human," "to sacrifice a citizen", and "sacrifice in place of flesh." Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff argue that the term "refers to a live sacrifice of a child or animal."


title: Tophet

text: The god to whom these sacrifices was directed is disputed in modern scholarship, with a dispute arising over whether the sacrifices were part of the cult of Yahweh. Traditionally, the god to whom the sacrifices were offered has been said to be Molech, supposedly an underworld god whose name means king. The Bible connects the Tophet with Moloch in two later texts, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 32:25. Lindsay Cooper writes in support of this connection that "The location of the Jerusalem tofet outside the city's eastern wall, at the traditional entrance to the netherworld, explicitly connects child sacrifice with the cult of death." However, while scholars recognize the existence of an underworld deity called "M-l-k" with various vocalizations (e.g. Molech, Milcom) as well as an Akkadian term for the shades of the dead, there is no evidence to connect these deities or shades to human sacrifice. Later Phoenician and Punic sacrifices of children called "mlk" in inscriptions or described by Greco-Roman sources are not associated with these gods. On the basis of the word meaning "to sacrifice" "an increasing number of scholars now take the biblical traditions to attest not to the offering of children in fiery sacrifices to the deity “Molek”, but rather to the sacrifice of children as “mlk” offerings to another deity." On the basis of the stories of Abraham and Jephthah offering their children to Yahweh, as well as Micah 6:6-7 and other passages, Francesca Stavrakopoulou argues that the offerings were in fact for Yahweh rather than for a foreign deity.


title: Tophet

text: The topheth's description as a place of punishment derives in part by the use of the word in , in which Yahweh ignites a large tophet to punish the Assyrians:


title: Tophet

text: The location of the tophet, the valley of Gehenna, subsequently became a place of punishment in the eschatology of Jewish Apocalypticism, something found in the 3rd- or 4th-century BCE Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 26:4; 27:2–3). The Talmud, discussing the passage in Isaiah, states that whoever commits evil will fall there (Eruvin 19a).


title: Tophet

text: Various Greek and Roman sources describe the Carthaginians as engaging in the practice of sacrificing children by burning as part of their religion. These descriptions were compared to those found in the Hebrew Bible. The ancient descriptions were seemingly confirmed by the discovering of the so-called "Tophet of Salambô" in Carthage in 1921, which contained the urns of cremated children. However, modern historians and archaeologists debate the reality and extent of this practice. Some scholars propose that all remains at the Tophet were sacrificed, whereas others propose that only some were.


title: Tophet

text: In Phoenician sites throughout the Western Mediterranean (except for Spain and Ibiza), archaeology has revealed fields full of buried urns containing the burnt remains of human infants and lambs, covered by carved stone monuments. These fields are conventionally referred to as "tophets" by archaeologists, after the location in the Bible. When Carthaginian inscriptions refer to these locations, they use the terms "bt" (house, temple or sanctuary) or "qdš" (shrine), not "tophet". Archaeology reveals two "generations" of Punic tophets: those founded by Phoenician colonists between 800 and 400 BCE; and those founded under Carthaginian influence (direct or indirect) in North Africa from the 4th century BCE onward.


title: Tophet

text: No Carthaginian literary texts survive that would explain or describe what rituals were performed at the tophet. Archaeological evidence shows that the remains could consist of human infants or lambs, often mixed with small portions of other animals, including cows, pigs, fish, birds, and deer. The proportion of lamb to human remains differs by site. At Carthage, 31% of the urns contained lambs; at Tharros it was 47%. Analysis of the bone fragments provides some information about the remains. In a sample of seventy infants from the tophet at Carthage, 37% were identified as male and 54% as female. The age of the children and whether they had died before they were interred is controversial (see below). The lambs are usually between one and three months old; this might indicate that offerings were made at a specific time following the lambing (February/March and October/November). The bone fragments were subjected to uneven temperatures, indicating that they were burnt on an open-air pyre over the course of several hours. The remains were then collected and placed in an urn, sometimes mixing in bones from other infants or lambs - suggesting that multiple infants/lambs were burnt on the same pyre. Sometimes jewellery or amulets were added to the urn. The urn was placed in the ground, in holes cut into the bedrock or within boxes made from stone slabs. In some cases a stone monument was set up above the urn. This could take the form of a stele, cippus, or throne, often with figural decoration and an inscription. In a few occasions, a chapel was built as well. Steles are oriented toward the east.


title: Tophet

text: The figural decoration on the stone monuments takes different forms in different regions. In Carthage, geometric patterns were preferred. In Sardinia, human figures are more common. Inscriptions are most common in the Tophet of Salammbó at Carthage, where there are thousands of examples. There are some from other tophets as well. Matthew McCarty cites "CIS" I.2.511 as a typical inscription:


title: Tophet

text: To Lady Tanit, face of Baal, and to Lord Baal Hammon: <nowiki>[</nowiki>that<nowiki>]</nowiki> which Arisham son of Bodashtart, son of Bodeshmun vowed ("ndr"); because he (the god) heard his (Arisham's) voice, he blessed him.


title: Tophet

text: Thus, these texts present the monument as a votive offering to the gods, in thanks for favor received from them. Sometimes the final clause instead reads "may he (the god) hear his voice," (i.e. in expectation of a future favor). The individual making the offering is almost always a single individual, nearly always male. The dead child is never mentioned. Tanit appears only in examples from Carthage. Other inscriptions refer to the ritual as "mlk" or "molk". The meaning of this term is uncertain, but it appears to be the same word as the Biblical term "Molech" discussed above. The inscriptions distinguish between "mlk b'l" / "mlk ʿdm" ("molk" of a citizen/person) and "mlk ʿmr" ("molk" of a lamb).


title: Tophet

text: Over a hundred tophets have been identified. The earliest examples were established at Carthage, Malta, Motya in western Sicily, and Tharros in southern Sardinia, when the Phoenicians first settled in these areas in the ninth century BCE. The largest known tophet, the Tophet of Salammbô at Carthage, seems to have been established at this time and continued in use for at least a few decades after the city's destruction in 146 BCE. The stone markers first appeared at Salammbô around 650 BCE and spread to Motya and Tharros around 600 BCE. Between the fifth and third centuries BCE, tophets became more common in southern Sardinia and the Carthaginian hinterland, as Phoenician settlement expanded. In Sicily and Sardinia, tophets slowly went out of use in the third and second centuries BCE, following the establishment of Roman control in the First Punic War. In the same period in North Africa, a large number of new tophets were established particularly in inland Tunisia. Many of these tophets remained in use after the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE. In the late first and second centuries CE, migration resulting from military deployment patterns led to the establishment of new tophets in Tunisia and eastern Algeria. In the Roman period, inscriptions name the god to which the monuments were dedicated as Saturn. In addition to infants, some of these tophets contain offerings only of goats, sheep, birds, or plants; many of the worshipers have Libyan rather than Punic names. Their use appears to have declined in the second and third centuries CE.


title: Tophet

text: Greco-Roman sources frequently criticize the Carthaginians for engaging in child sacrifice. The earliest references to the practice are bare references in Sophocles and the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, "Minos", probably of the fourth century BCE. The late fourth century BCE philosopher Theophrastus claimed that the Syracusan tyrant Gelon had demanded that the Carthaginians abandon the practice after he defeated them in the Battle of Himera (480 BC).


title: Tophet

text: The first detailed account comes from Cleitarchus, an early third-century BCE historian of Alexander the Great, who is quoted by a scholiast as saying:


title: Tophet

text: The first century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes that, when the Carthaginians were besieged by Agathocles of Syracuse in 310 BCE, the Carthaginians responded by sacrificing large numbers of children according to an old custom they had abandoned:


title: Tophet

text: They also alleged that Kronos had turned against them inasmuch as in former times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice; and when an investigation was made, some of those who had been sacrificed were discovered to have been substituted by stealth. ... In their zeal to make amends for the omission, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in number not less than three hundred. There was in the city a bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire. Elsewhere in the Bibliotheca Diodorus claims that wealthy Carthaginians would purchase infant slaves to offer in lieu of their own children.


title: Tophet

text: Several Christian authors allude to the practice in the early centuries CE. The Christian apologist Tertullian, about 200 CE, states that although the priests who sacrificed children had been crucified by a Roman procurator, "that holy crime persists in secret". Another Christian writer, Minucius Felix, claims that Punic women aborted their children as a form of sacrifice.


title: Tophet

text: The degree and existence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is controversial. Some archaeologists and historians argue that the literary and archaeological evidence indicates that all remains in the tophets were sacrificed. Sabatino Moscati and other scholars have argued that the tophets were cemeteries for premature or short-lived infants who died naturally and then were ritually offered. Others argue that only some infants were sacrificed.


title: Tophet

text: The account given by the Greco-Roman authors is questionable. They were not eye-witnesses, contradict each other on how the children were killed, and describe children older than infants being killed as opposed to the infants found in the tophets. The archaeological evidence is not consistent with the mechanical statue of Cronus mentioned by Cleitarchus and Diodorus. There are no references to child sacrifice in Greco-Roman accounts of the Punic Wars, which are better documented than the earlier periods in which mass child sacrifice is claimed. Many, but not all, Greco-Roman authors were hostile to the Carthaginians because they had been enemies in the Sicilian and Punic Wars and this may have influenced their presentation of the practice. Matthew McCarty argues that, even if the Greco-Roman testimonies are inaccurate "even the most fantastical slanders rely upon a germ of fact."


title: Tophet

text: The archaeological evidence is ambiguous. An osteological study of the remains at Carthage by Jeffrey Schwartz et al. suggested 38% of a sample of 540 individuals had died before or during childbirth, based on the size of the bones, the development of teeth, and the absence of neonatal lines on teeth. Another osteological study of the same material challenged these findings, arguing that it had not taken account of the shrinkage of the bones caused by the burning process. The form of the deposits in tophets is different from Carthaginian graves for non-infants, which usually took the form of burials, not cremations. Phoenician grave goods are also different from the objects found with the human remains in tophets. However, cross-culturally, funerary practices for infants often differ from those for non-infants.


title: Tophet

text: Many archaeologists argue that the ancient authors and the evidence of the Tophet indicates that all remains in the Tophet must have been sacrificed. Others argue that only some infants were sacrificed. Paolo Xella argues that "the principle of Occam’s Razor" indicates that the weight of classical and biblical sources indicate that the sacrifices occurred. He further argues that the number of children in the tophet is far smaller than the rate of natural infant mortality. In Xella's estimation, prenatal remains at the tophet are probably those of children who were promised to be sacrificed but died before birth, but who were nevertheless offered as a sacrifice in fulfillment of a vow. He concludes that


title: Tophet

text: The legendary death of Carthage's first queen Elissa (Dido) by immolation, as well as the deaths of Hamilcar and the wife of Hasdrubal the Boetharch in the same manner, has been connected to the tophet ritual by some scholars. It is possible that the practice was more frequent in the earlier years of the city.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Islam is the most practiced religion in Turkey. The established presence of Islam in the region that now constitutes modern Turkey dates back to the later half of the 11th century, when the Seljuks started expanding into eastern Anatolia.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is Muslim since traditional non-Muslim ethnic groups of Turkey (such as Jews, Armenians and Greeks) don't consist more than 0.2%, although some surveys give a slightly lower estimate of 96.2%, with the most popular school of thought (maddhab) being the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam (about 90% of the overall Muslim denominations). The remaining Muslim sects forming about 9% of the overall Muslim population consist of Alevis, Ja'faris (representing 1%) and Alawites (with an estimated population of around 1 million) which is about 1% of the overall Muslim population in Turkey.There are also a minority of Sufi and non-denominational Muslims.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: According to religiosity poll conducted in Turkey in 2019 by OPTİMAR, 89.5% of the population identifies as Muslim, 4.5% believed in God but did not belong to an organized religion, 2.7% were agnostic, 1.7% were atheist, 0.5% belonged to other religions, and 1.1% did not give an answer.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: During the Muslim conquests of the 7th and early 8th centuries, Arab armies established the Islamic Empire. The Islamic Golden Age was soon inaugurated by the middle of the 8th century by the ascension of the Abbasid Caliphate and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The later period saw initial expansion and the capture of Crete (840). The Abbasids soon shifted their attention towards the East. During the later fragmentation of the Abbasid rule and the rise of their Shiite rivals the Fatimids and Buyids, a resurgent Byzantium recaptured Crete and Cilicia in 961, Cyprus in 965, and pushed into the Levant by 975. The Byzantines successfully contested with the Fatimids for influence in the region until the arrival of the Seljuk Turks who first allied with the Abbasids and then ruled as the "de facto" rulers.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: In 1068 Alp Arslan and allied Turkoman tribes recaptured many Abbasid lands and even invaded Byzantine regions, pushing further into eastern and central Anatolia after a major victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The disintegration of the Seljuk dynasty resulted in the rise of subsequent, smaller, rival Turkic kingdoms such as the Danishmends, the Sultanate of Rum, and various Atabegs who contested the control of the region during the Crusades and incrementally expanded across Anatolia until the rise of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Beginning in the twelfth century, new waves of Turkic migrants many of whom belonged to Sufi orders, some of which later incorporated heterodox beliefs. One Sufi order that appealed to Turks on Anatolia after 1300 was the Safaviyya, an order that was originally Sunni and non-political but later became both Shi'a and political based in northwest Iran. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Safavid and similar orders such as the Bektaşi became rivals of the Ottomans—who were orthodox Sunni Muslims—for political control of eastern Anatolia. Although the Bektaşi order became accepted as a sect of orthodox Sunni Muslims, they did not abandon their heterodox beliefs. In contrast, the Safavids eventually conquered Iran, shed their heterodox religious beliefs, and became proponents of orthodox Twelver Shi'a Islam.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) in 1453 enabled the Ottomans to consolidate their empire in Anatolia and Thrace. The Ottomans later revived the title of caliph during the reign of Sultan Selim. Despite the absence of a formal institutional structure, Sunni religious functionaries played an important political role. Justice was dispensed by religious courts; in theory, the codified system of şeriat regulated all aspects of life, at least for the Muslim subjects of the empire. The head of the judiciary ranked directly below the sultan and was second in power only to the grand vizier. Early in the Ottoman period, the office of grand mufti of Istanbul evolved into that of Şeyhülislam (shaykh, or "leader of Islam"), which had ultimate jurisdiction over all the courts in the empire and consequently exercised authority over the interpretation and application of şeriat. Legal opinions pronounced by the Şeyhülislam were considered definitive interpretations.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The secularization of Turkey started in the society during the last years of the Ottoman Empire and it was the most prominent and most controversial feature of Atatürk's reforms. Under his leadership, the caliphate—the supreme politico-religious office of Sunni Islam, and symbol of the sultan's claim to world leadership of all Muslims—was abolished. The secular power of the religious authorities and functionaries was reduced and eventually eliminated. The religious foundations were nationalized, and religious education was restricted and for a time prohibited. The influential and popular mystical orders of the dervish brotherhoods (Tariqa) also were suppressed.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The withdrawal of Turkey, heir to the Ottoman Empire, as the presumptive leader of the world Muslim community was symbolic of the change in the government's relationship to Islam. Indeed, secularism "(or laiklik)" became one of the "Kemalist ideology" of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's anti-clerical program for remaking Turkey. Whereas Islam had formed the identity of Muslims within the Ottoman Empire, secularism was seen as molding the new Turkish nation and its citizens.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: In 1922 the new nationalist regime abolished the Ottoman sultanate, and in 1924 it abolished the caliphate, the religious office that Ottoman sultans had held for four centuries. Thus, for the first time in Islamic history, no ruler claimed spiritual leadership of Islam.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Atatürk and his associates not only abolished certain religious practices and institutions but also questioned the value of religion, preferring to place their trust in science. They regarded organized religion as an anachronism and contrasted it unfavorably with "civilization", which to them meant a rationalist, secular culture. Establishment of secularism in Turkey was not, as it had been in the West, a gradual process of separation of church and state. In the Ottoman Empire, all spheres of life, at least theoretically, had been subject to traditional religious law, and Sunni religious organizations had been part of the state structure. However, usually state had authority over the clergy and religious law, even at the Ottoman period (e.g.many Sultans are known to change Şeyhülislams, who do not approve state politics). When the reformers of the early 1920s opted for a secular state, they removed religion from the sphere of public policy and restricted it exclusively to that of personal morals, behavior, and faith. Although private observance of religious rituals could continue, religion and religious organization were excluded from public life.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The policies directly affecting religion were numerous and sweeping. In addition to the abolition of the caliphate, new laws mandated abolition of the office of Şeyhülislam; abolition of the religious hierarchy; the closing and confiscation of Sufi lodges, meeting places, and monasteries and the outlawing of their rituals and meetings; establishment of government control over the vakıfs, which had been inalienable under Sharia; replacement of sharia with adapted European legal codes; the closing of religious schools; abandonment of the Islamic calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in the West; restrictions on public attire that had religious associations, with the fez outlawed for men and the veil discouraged for women; and the outlawing of the traditional garb of local religious leaders.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Atatürk and his colleagues also attempted to Turkify Islam through official encouragement of such practices as using Turkish rather than Arabic at devotions, substituting the Turkish word Tanrı for the Arabic word Allah, and introducing Turkish for the daily calls to prayer. These changes in devotional practices deeply disturbed many Muslims and caused widespread resentment, which led in 1950 to a return to the Arabic version of the call to prayer, after the opposition party DP won the elections. Of longer-lasting effect were the regime's measures prohibiting religious education, restricting the building of new mosques, and transferring existing mosques to secular purposes. Most notably, the Hagia Sophia (Justinian's sixth-century Christian basilica, which had been converted into a mosque by Mehmet II) was made a museum in 1935. The effect of these changes was to make religion, or more correctly Islam, subject to the control of the state. Muftis and imams (prayer leaders) were appointed by the government, and religious instruction was taken over by the Ministry of National Education. As a result of these policies, the Turkish Republic was judged negatively by some sections of the Muslim world.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The expectation of the secular ruling elite that the policies of the 1920s and 1930s would diminish the role of religion in public life did not materialize. As early as 1925, religious grievances were one of the principal causes of the Şeyh Sait rebellion, an uprising in southeastern Turkey that may have claimed as many as 30,000 lives before being suppressed.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Although Turkey was secularized at the official level, religion remained a strong force. After 1950 some political leaders tried to benefit from popular attachment to religion by espousing support for programs and policies that appealed to the religiously inclined. Such efforts were opposed by most of the state elite, who believed that secularism was an essential principle of Kemalist Ideology. This disinclination to appreciate religious values and beliefs gradually led to a polarization of society. The polarization became especially evident in the 1980s as a new generation of educated but religiously motivated local leaders emerged to challenge the dominance of the secularized political elite. These new leaders have been assertively proud of Turkey's Islamic heritage and generally have been successful at adapting familiar religious idioms to describe dissatisfaction with various government policies. By their own example of piety, prayer, and political activism, they have helped to spark a revival of Islamic observance in Turkey. By 1994 slogans promising that a return to Islam would cure economic ills and solve the problems of bureaucratic inefficiencies had enough general appeal to enable avowed religious candidates to win mayoral elections in Istanbul and Ankara, the country's two largest cities.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Following the relaxation of authoritarian political controls in 1946, large numbers of people began to call openly for a return to traditional religious practice. During the 1950s, even certain political leaders found it expedient to join religious leaders in advocating more state respect for religion.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: A more direct manifestation of the growing reaction against secularism was the revival of the Sufi brotherhoods. Not only did suppressed Sufi orders such as the Kadiri, Mevlevi, Nakşibendi, Khālidiyyā and Al-Ṭarīqah al-Tijāniyyah reemerge, but new movements were formed, including the Nur Cemaati, Gülen movement, Sülaymānīyyā, Community of İskenderpaşa and İsmailağa. The Tijāni became especially militant in confronting the state. For example, Tijāni damaged monuments to Atatürk to symbolize their opposition to his policy of secularization. This was however a very isolated incident and only involved one particular Sheikh of the order. Throughout the 1950s, there were numerous trials of Ticani and other Sufi leaders for antistate activities. Simultaneously, however, some movements, notably the Süleymancı and Nurcular, cooperated with those politicians perceived as supportive of pro-Islamic policies. The Nurcular eventually advocated support for Turkey's multiparty political system, and one of its offshoots, the Gülen movement, had supported the True Path Party while the Işıkçılar and Enver Ören had openly supported the Motherland Party since the mid-1980s.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The demand for restoration of religious education in public schools began in the late 1940s. The government initially responded by authorizing religious instruction in state schools for those students whose parents requested it. Under Democrat Party rule during the 1950s, religious education was made compulsory in secondary schools unless parents made a specific request to have their children excused. Religious education was made compulsory for all primary and secondary school children in 1982.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Inevitably, the reintroduction of religion into the school curriculum raised the question of religious higher education. The secular elites, who tended to distrust traditional religious leaders, believed that Islam could be "reformed" if future leaders were trained in state-controlled seminaries. To further this goal, the government in 1949 established a faculty of divinity at Ankara University to train teachers of Islam and imams. In 1951 the Democrat Party government set up special secondary schools (İmam Hatip schools) for the training of imams and preachers. Initially, the imam hatip schools grew very slowly, but their numbers expanded rapidly to more than 250 during the 1970s, when the pro-Islam National Salvation Party participated in coalition governments. Following the 1980 coup, the military, although secular in orientation, viewed religion as an effective means to counter socialist ideas and thus authorized the construction of ninety more İmam Hatip high schools.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: During the 1970s and 1980s, Islam experienced a kind of political rehabilitation because right-of-center secular leaders perceived religion as a potential bulwark in their ideological struggle with left-of-center secular leaders. A small advocacy group that became extremely influential was the Hearth of Intellectuals ("Aydınlar Ocağı"), an organization that maintains that true Turkish culture is a synthesis of the Turks' pre-Islamic traditions and Islam. According to the Hearth, Islam not only constitutes an essential aspect of Turkish culture but is a force that can be regulated by the state to help socialize the people to be obedient citizens acquiescent to the overall secular order. After the 1980 military coup, many of the Hearth's proposals for restructuring schools, colleges, and state broadcasting were adopted. The result was a purge from these state institutions of more than 2,000 intellectuals perceived as espousing leftist ideas incompatible with the Hearth's vision of Turkey's national culture.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The state's more tolerant attitude toward Islam encouraged the proliferation of private religious activities, including the construction of new mosques and Qur'an schools in the cities, the establishment of Islamic centers for research on and conferences about Islam and its role in Turkey, and the establishment of religiously oriented professional and women's journals. The printing of newspapers, the publication of religious books, and the growth of innumerable religious projects ranging from health centers, child-care facilities, and youth hostels to financial institutions and consumer cooperatives flourished. When the government legalized private broadcasting after 1990, several Islamic radio stations were organized. In the summer of 1994, the first Islamic television station, Kanal 7, began broadcasting, first in Istanbul and subsequently in Ankara.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Although the tarikah (the term can sometimes be used to refer to any 'group or sect' some of whom may not even be Muslim) have played a seminal role in Turkey's religious revival and in the mid-1990s still published several of the country's most widely circulated religious journals and newspapers, a new phenomenon, "İslamcı Aydın" (the Islamist intellectual) unaffiliated with the traditional Sufi orders, emerged during the 1980s. Prolific and popular writers such as Ali Bulaç, Rasim Özdenören, and İsmet Özel have drawn upon their knowledge of Western philosophy, Marxist sociology, and radical Islamist political theory to advocate a modern Islamic perspective that does not hesitate to criticize genuine societal ills while simultaneously remaining faithful to the ethical values and spiritual dimensions of religion. Islamist intellectuals are harshly critical of Turkey's secular intellectuals, whom they fault for trying to do in Turkey what Western intellectuals did in Europe: substitute worldly materialism, in its capitalist or socialist version, for religious values.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: On 15 July 2016, a coup d'état was attempted in Turkey against state institutions by a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces with connections to the Gülen movement, citing an erosion in secularism.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in practice; however, the Government imposes some restrictions on all religious expression in government offices and state-run institutions, including universities, usually for the stated reason of preserving the secular state, and distance of state to all kinds of beliefs. The Constitution establishes the country as a secular state and provides for freedom of belief, freedom of worship, and the private dissemination of religious ideas. However, other constitutional provisions regarding the integrity and existence of the secular state restrict these rights. The secularity, bearing a meaning of a protection of believers, plays an important role to protect the state.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: While most of the secular countries have religious schools and educational system, one in Turkey can only have religious teachings after a state decided age; which is considered as a necessity given the fact that Turkey is the only considerably secular country in the Muslim world, i.e. it is claimed that conditions to establish secularism on are different than those in Christian world. The establishment of private religious schools and universities (regardless of what religion) is forbidden. Only the state controlled "Imam-Hatip high school" is allowed which benefits only Islamic community in Turkey. This type of high schools teach religious subjects with modern positive science. However, graduates of these schools cannot go to the university to seek higher education in another field of study for example medicine, law, engineering etc.; because graduates of these schools are intended to be clerics, rather than being doctors or lawyers. With the rise of fundamentalism in schools, more than 370 Turkish schools have signed a political declaration by the High School Students Union of Turkey (TLB) in order to protest what they perceive as anti-secularism in schools. Accordingly, there has been a rise in voiced objections to the conversion of schools into an Imam-Hatip, which has affected many Turkish schools since 2012. Many parents have complained about the increasing pressure of schools to become an Imam-Hatip.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The Government oversees Muslim religious facilities and education through its Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), which reports directly to the Prime Ministry. The Diyanet has responsibility for regulating the operation of the country's 75,000 registered mosques and employing local and provincial imams, who are civil servants. Some groups, particularly Alevis, claim that the Diyanet reflects mainstream Islamic beliefs to the exclusion of other beliefs. The government asserts that the Diyanet treats equally all who request services. However, Alevis do not utilize Mosques or the imams for their worship ceremonies. Alevi ceremonies take place in Cem Houses and led by Dedes who do not benefit from the large budget of the Religious Affairs.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Reforms going in the direction of secularism have been completed under Atatürk (abolition of the caliphate, etc.).


title: Islam in Turkey

text: There is an administration called "Presidency of Religious Affairs" or Diyanet manages 77,500 mosques. This state agency, established by Atatürk (1924), finance only Sunni Muslim worship Other religions must ensure a financially self-sustaining running and they face administrative obstacles during operation.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The Diyanet is an official state institution established in 1924 and works to provide Quranic education for children, as well as drafting weekly sermons delivered to approximately 85,000 different mosques. Furthermore, the Diyanet employs all of the imams in Turkey.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: When collecting tax, all Turkish citizens are equal. The tax rate is not based on religion. However, through the Diyanet, Turkish citizens are not equal in the use of revenue. The Presidency of Religious Affairs, which has a budget over U.S. $2.5 billion in 2012, finance only Sunni Muslim worship.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: This situation presents a theological problem, insofar as Islam stipulates, through the notion of haram (Qur'an, Surah 6, verse 152), that we must "give full measure and full weight in all justice”.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Sufi orders like Alevi-Bektashi, Bayrami-Jelveti, Halveti "(Gulshani, Jerrahi, Nasuhi, Rahmani, Sunbuli, Ussaki)," Hurufi-Rüfai, Malamati, Mevlevi, Nakşibendi "(Halidi, Haqqani)," Qadiri-Galibi and Ja'fari Muslims are not officially recognized.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Although intellectual debates on the role of Islam attracted widespread interest, they did not provoke the kind of controversy that erupted over the issue of appropriate attire for Muslim women. During the early 1980s, female college students who were determined to demonstrate their commitment to Islam began to cover their heads and necks with scarves and wear long, shape-concealing overcoats. The appearance of these women in the citadels of Turkish secularism shocked those men and women who tended to perceive such attire as a symbol of the Islamic traditionalism they rejected. Militant secularists persuaded the Higher Education Council to issue a regulation in 1987 forbidding female university students to cover their heads in class. Protests by thousands of religious students and some university professors forced several universities to waive enforcement of the dress code. The issue continued to be seriously divisive in the mid-1990s. Throughout the first half of the 1990s, highly educated, articulate but religiously pious women have appeared in public dressed in Islamic attire that conceals all but their faces and hands. Other women, especially in Ankara, Istanbul, and İzmir, have demonstrated against such attire by wearing revealing fashions and Atatürk badges. The issue is discussed and debated in almost every type of forum – artistic, commercial, cultural, economic, political, and religious. For many citizens of Turkey, women's dress has become the issue that defines whether a Muslim is secularist or religious. In 2010, the Turkish Higher Educational council (YÖK) lifted the ban on headscarves at the universities. Since the start of his presidency, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drastically increased the amount of religious high schools across Turkey to support his plan on bringing up a more pious generation. However, this push on piousness in school children seems to have had an adverse effect, for there is anecdotal evidence of a notable amount of Turkish students from religious high schools admitting their loss of faith in Islamic beliefs, which has caused substantial amount of discussion among politicians and religious clerics.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: More recently in 2016, Turkey approved hijab as the part of the official police uniform. For the first time, female officers will be able to cover their heads with a headscarf under their police caps. This act was pushed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) that have been pushing for relaxed restrictions on the hijab.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are Muslim and the Sunni Islam is the most populous Islamic sect, comprising about %90 of the Muslims in the country. The most popular school of law is the Hanafite madh'hab of Sunni Islam. The Hanafi madhhab was the official school of Islamic jurisprudence espoused by the Ottoman Empire and a 2013 survey conducted by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs indicates that 77.5 percent of Turkish Muslims identify themselves as Hanafis. Another common Sunni jurisprudence, Shafi'i is the dominant one in Turkish Kurdistan. Although the Maturidi and Ash'ari schools of Islamic theology (which apply Ilm al-Kalam or rational thought to understand the Quran and the hadith) have been the dominant creeds in Turkey due to their widespread acceptance and propagation since the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, the Athari (literalist) creed of the Salafi movement has seen increasing acceptance.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Compared to the Hanbali school of Islam, the Hanafi school of Islam takes a much more liberal take on the religion, allowing for a more lenient interpretation of religious law.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The Sunni Islamic faith has continuously been a domineering faith since 661. The name Sunni originates from the emphasis of importance on the Sunna, which is related to the establishment of the Shari'a laws.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Twelver branch of Shia Islam Muslim population of Turkey is composed of Ja'fari aqidah and fiqh, Batiniyya-Sufism aqidah of fiqh of the Alevīs, and Cillī aqidah of Maymūn ibn Abu’l-Qāsim Sulaiman ibn Ahmad ibn at-Tabarānī fiqh of the Alawites, who altogether constitutes nearly one tenth of the whole population of the country. An estimate for the Turkish Alevi population varies from 3.5 million to 11 million. However it's so hard to estimate a realistic number for Shia population in Turkey since the country doesn't conduct ethnic or religious censuses.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Unlike the common usage of the term "Shi'a" in other languages, "Aleviler" instead is being frequently used to represent all the Shi'a Muslim sects in Turkish language. Furthermore, the term Kızılbaş in the history was used pejoratively for all Shi'ites in Anatolia.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Estimates for Alevi population vary from less than 4 million to more than 25 million according to different sources. It's hard to make a realistic estimate for their population since Turkish government has never asked about religious denominations in conducted censuses. Another reason for that is secular tendencies of Alevi population and oppressions by Sunni Islamists make most Alevis to hide their religious identity. However considering the conducted few reliable surveys about that ~10% can be taken as a simplistic estimation. Some people use the term Alevi to refer all Shia Muslims in Turkey since they are the dominant Shia sect in the country.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The followers of the Ja'fari jurisprudence constitute the third sizable community. It is historically the primary denomination of ethnic Azerbaijani people. Most of them lives in the eastern provinces neighboring to Azerbaijan, more particularly in the Iğdır Province and Kars Province, but also larger cities in the west. Considering the population of their historical homeland, it can be simplistically said that they constitute up to 1 million people in Turkey. They have 70 mosques in Istanbul and some 300 throughout the country and receive no state funding for their mosques and imams as the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is exclusively Sunni.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The majority of the Alawite community in Turkey with an estimated population of around 1 million lives in the Province of Hatay, where they nearly represent half of the total population,


title: Islam in Turkey

text: primarily in the districts of Arsuz, Defne and Samandağ, where Alawites constitute the majority and in Iskenderun and Antakya where they constitute a significant minority of the population.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Larger Alawite communities can also be found in the Çukurova region, mostly in and around the cities of Adana, Tarsus and Mersin. They are known as Arab Alevis by Turkish people.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Folk Islam in Turkey has derived many of its popular practices from Sufism which has good presence in Turkey and Egypt. Particular Sufi shaikhs – and occasionally other individuals reputed to be pious – were regarded after death as saints having special powers. Veneration of saints (both male and female) and pilgrimages to their shrines and graves represent an important aspect of popular Islam in the country. Folk Islam has continued to embrace such practices although the veneration of saints officially has been discouraged since the 1930s. Plaques posted in various sanctuaries forbid the lighting of candles, the offering of votive objects, and related devotional activities in these places. Modern day Sufi shaykhs with large adherents in Turkey include Shaykh Mehmet Efendi (residing in Istanbul) and Mawlana Sheikh Nazim Al-Haqqani who resided in Lefka, North Cyprus, until his death in May, 2014.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Those who do not accept the authority of hadith, known as Quranists, Quraniyoon, or Ahl al-Quran, are also present in Turkey. In Turkey, Quranist ideas became particularly noticeable, with portions of the youth either leaving Islam or converting to Quranism. There has been significant Quranist scholarship in Turkey, with there being even Quranist theology professors in significant universities, including scholars like Yaşar Nuri Öztürk and Caner Taslaman. Some believe that there are secret Quranists even in the Diyanet itself.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) regularly criticizes and insults Quranists, gives them no recognition and calls them kafirs (disbelievers). Quranists responded with arguments and challenged them to a debate.


title: Islam in Turkey

text: Turkey is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, formerly the Organisation of the Islamic Conference). The headquarters of some Islamic organizations are located in Turkey:


title: Karen Steele

text: Karen Steele (March 20, 1931 – March 12, 1988) was an American actress and model with more than 60 roles in film and television. Her most famous roles include starring as Virginia in "Marty", as Mrs. Lane in "Ride Lonesome", and as Eve McHuron in the "" episode "Mudd's Women".


title: Karen Steele

text: Steele was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Percy Davis Steele, a Bostonian of English descent and a career Marine who in 1956 was named assistant administrator of the Marshall Islands. Her mother, Ruth Covey Merritt, was a Californian of French and Danish heritage. Steele's childhood in the Hawaiian Islands brought her into contact with the Japanese and Hawaiian languages, as well as English.


title: Karen Steele

text: When she was 13 years old, a surfing accident resulted in Steele's leg being cut by coral segments. She later developed osteomyelitis in the leg with infection so severe that amputation was seriously considered until a doctor brought to Hawaii from Hong Kong ended the infection. The leg had to be rebuilt with wires and metal, but after 22 operations she began rehabilitation to resume walking.


title: Karen Steele

text: Steele attended the University of Hawaii and studied acting at Rollins College in Florida for a year. After that, she found work as a cover girl and model.


title: Karen Steele

text: Steele's first acting job was on the radio program "Let George Do It". She subsequently appeared in the films "The Clown" (in an uncredited role, 1953) and "Man Crazy" (also 1953) as Marge. The following year, she landed the role of Millie Darrow in "So False and So Fair" on the television anthology "Studio 57", but a supporting role in "Marty" (1955) was her highest profile film role. She played Virginia and got the part because director Delbert Mann had confused her with an actress from New York whom he and writer Paddy Chayefsky had intended to play it.


title: Karen Steele

text: In 1957, she guest starred on the TV program "Maverick", as Molly Gleason in the episode "Point Blank" opposite James Garner and Mike Connors. In 1958, she played the titular role in the episode "Madame Faro" of NBC's "Jefferson Drum", another western series.


title: Karen Steele

text: Steele made two guest appearances on CBS's "Perry Mason", as Doris Stephanek in "The Case of the Haunted Husband" (1958) and as murder victim Carina Wileen in "The Case of the Fatal Fetish" (1965). She appeared as Mae Dailey in the 1961 episode "Big Time Blues" on the ABC/Warner Brothers drama, "The Roaring 20s". Earlier, she was cast in a guest-starring role in another ABC/WB series, "The Alaskans" starring Roger Moore.


title: Karen Steele

text: In 1962, she portrayed the part of Dolly LeMoyne in the episode "The Woman Trap" on CBS's "Rawhide" starring Clint Eastwood. Her character in "Survival of the Fattest", a 1965 episode of NBC's "Get Smart", was named Mary 'Jack' Armstrong, said to be "the strongest female enemy agent in the world". This is a reference to Jack Armstrong, the clean-cut fictional hero of "Jack Armstrong the All American Boy", an adventure series broadcast on radio from 1933 to 1951. She appeared in an early episode of "" ("Mudd's Women", 1966). Like many actresses, as she got older, she turned to television commercials for income. She also became involved in charitable causes and community service. In early 1970, she went on a handshake tour of service hospitals in the South Pacific, rather than accept a series that would have paid her $78,000. As a result, she lost her agent.


title: Karen Steele

text: In later life, she settled in Golden Valley, Arizona, and married Dr. Maurice Boyd Ruland, a psychiatrist at the Mohave Mental Health Clinic. They were married until her death from cancer at age 56 at the Kingman Regional Medical Center in Kingman, Arizona.


title: James Buchanan Duke

text: James Buchanan Duke (December 23, 1856 – October 10, 1925) was an American tobacco and electric power industrialist best known for the introduction of modern cigarette manufacture and marketing, and his involvement with Duke University. He was also the founder of the American Tobacco Company in 1890.


title: James Buchanan Duke

text: James Buchanan Duke, known by the nickname "Buck", was born on December 23, 1856, near Durham, North Carolina, to tobacco manufacturer, philanthropist, and namesake of Duke University, Washington Duke (1820–1905), and his second wife, Artelia Roney.


title: James Buchanan Duke

text: Duke's father, Washington, had owned a tobacco company that his sons James and Benjamin (1855–1929) took over in the 1880s. In 1885, James Buchanan Duke acquired a license to use the first automated cigarette making machine (invented by James Albert Bonsack), and by 1890, Duke supplied 40 percent of the American cigarette market (then known as pre-rolled tobacco). In that year, Duke consolidated control of his four major competitors under one corporate entity, the American Tobacco Company, which was a monopoly as he controlled over 90 percent of the American cigarette market. His robber baron business tactics directly led to the Black Patch Tobacco Wars in 1906-1908.