Figuring out what lies ahead for our species and our planet is one of the most pressing and challenging tasks for climate scientists.
Figuring out what lies ahead for our species and our planet is one of the most pressing and challenging tasks for climate scientists. While models are very useful, there is nothing quite like Earth’s history to reveal details about how oceans, animals, and plants respond to and recover from a warming world.
The two most recent major global warming events are especially instructive—and worrisome, say scientists presenting new research Wednesday at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America.
Ancient analogs
The two past climate crises that are comparable to today’s happened 56 and 66 million years ago. The earlier one, the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (KPB) mass extinction, is infamous for ending the reign of the dinosaurs. The later event, called the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was relatively less severe, and provides clues to how the world can recover from such difficult times.
“We chose these two because they are the most recent examples of rapid climate warming and have been widely studied so we have more information about them,” said Paula Mateo, a geologist at Caltech, who will be presenting the study on Wednesday.
Read more at Geological Society of America
Photo Credit: dimitrisvetsikas1969 via Pixabay
