The high-resolution sea surface temperature(SST)records of tropical oceans of the past 2 000years are crucial in understanding changes of the Holocene climate,which are essential for assessing the current global warming and forecasting the trends of future climate.The Northern South China Sea(NSCS)has a high deposition rate,where widely distributed corals and other archives can provide high-resolution climate records.This makes it an ideal area to study high-resolution SST changes in the past 2 000years.We here summarized and recalculated the reconstructed high-resolution SST records of the NSCS in recent years.The SST evolutionary features in this region in the past 2 000years was summed up,and its enlightenment on the understanding of global warming was discussed.Current studies have reported high-resolution SST time series of 596years across 10time periods,including monthly resolution SST records of months in 41years and annual resolution records of 555years.The trend of the SST variations formed by the SST anomaly values in these 10periods has divided the climate in the NSCS of the past 2 000years into five stages, warm period-cold period-warm period-cold period-warm period.Factors affecting the SST changes in the NSCS may include the volcanic activity,East Asian Monsoon,El Nino-Southern Oscillation,solar activity and human activity.Compared with the climate change driven by the natural forcing before the Industrial Revolution(the 1760s),current global warming is influenced both by the natural and human disturbances.Although the superposition of the strong human disturbances has not made the SST of the Current Warm Period significantly higher than that of the Medieval Warm Period,it appears to increase the frequency and magnitude of the SST variations,which likely generates more extreme climates and has great impacts on human's life.Considering that the existing reconstruction results are limited and they are far from elaborating the SST changes in the past 2 000years in this region,more studies are needed to enlarge the database of high-resolution SST changes in the NSCS.This may help to accurately divide the characteristic periods of the climate change in the past 2 000years in the NSCS,and to establish climate models for finely inverting SST changes.