UK (Commonwealth Union) – Climate change has been a key focus in recent years of many academic institutions and governments across the world. New research is focusing on how maps of the climate in the distant past can give details into the future as CO2 rates in the environment increase, according to a new study with academics from the University of St Andrews.
Around 56 million years ago, volcanoes quickly emitted large amounts of CO2 into the environment, believed to lead to rapid Earth heating.
The period known as Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is often referred to as a historic parallel for the future of us under climate change, as humans have also rapidly emitted CO2 into the environment in the last 250 years. Dr James Rae, Reader in the School of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of St Andrews, is part of the team that has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) together with temperature and rainfall maps of the Earth during the PETM to further grasp what conditions were like in that time period and the sensitivity of the climate to then to soaring levels of CO2.
The researchers, led by University of Arizona geosciences Professor Jessica Tierney, combined prior published temperature data and climate models to evaluate effects of a large CO2 release on the climate across the world.
“Our results show, in unprecedented detail, the patterns of climate change that occur when CO2 rises rapidly, providing a critical analogue for current global warming,” said Dr Rae.
This ancient warming occurrence and the future are characterized with quicker warming at the poles than the rest of the world, is known as arctic amplification, with stronger monsoons, greater winter storms and lower rainfall at the edges of the tropics. The researchers further observed that as more CO2 is pumped into the air, the climate becomes further sensitive than prior studies forecasted.
