Friday, October 9, 2009

Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

Photo: Aradhna Tripati. (Credit: Image courtesy of UCLA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2009) — You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," said the paper's lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

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1 comment:

Science in Seconds said...

The scariest part is what this could mean for agriculture... Are we heading for that kind of temperature rise? For every one degree increase in temperature there's predicted to be a 10% loss in crop yield.