Earth 'Locked Into' Hitting Temperatures Not Seen in 2 Million Years: Study

Earth ‘Locked Into’ Hitting Temperatures Not Seen in 2 Million Years: Study

New research predicts rise of up to 9° Celsius within next several thousand years—surpassing most other predictions

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/27/earth-locked-hitting-temperatures-not-seen-2-million-years-study

By: 2016-09-27
Date: Nika Knight

Earth is the warmest it’s been in 100,000 years, a new reconstruction of historical temperature data finds, and with today’s level of fossil fuel emissions the planet is “locked into” eventually hitting its highest temperature mark in 2 million years.

The new research published Monday in Nature was done by Carolyn Snyder, now a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as a part of her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, according to the Associated Press.

Snyder “created a continuous 2 million year temperature record, much longer than a previous 22,000 year record. [Snyder's reconstruction] doesn’t estimate temperature for a single year, but averages 5,000-year time periods going back a couple million years,” AP writes.

“We do find this close relationship between temperature and greenhouse gases that is remarkably stable, and what the study is developing is the coupling factor between the two,” Snyder told National Geographic.

AP further reports:

Temperatures averaged out over the most recent 5,000 years—which includes the last 125 years or so of industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases—are generally warmer than they have been since about 120,000 years ago or so, Snyder found. And two interglacial time periods, the one 120,000 years ago and another just about 2 million years ago, were the warmest Snyder tracked. They were about 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) warmer than the current 5,000-year average.

With the link to carbon dioxide levels and taking into account other factors and past trends, Snyder calculated how much warming can be expected in the future.

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