Past and Future Trends (IMAGE)
Caption
Past and future trends in global mean temperature spanning the last 67 million years. Oxygen isotope values in deep-sea benthic foraminifera from sediment cores are a measure of global temperature and ice volume. Temperature is relative to the 1961-1990 global mean. Data from ice core records of the last 25,000 years illustrate the transition from the last glacial to the current warmer period, the Holocene. Historic data from 1850 to today show the distinct increase after 1950 marking the onset of the Anthropocene. Future projections for global temperature for three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios in relation to the benthic deep-sea record suggest that by 2100 the climate state will be comparable to the Miocene Climate Optimum (~16 million years ago), well beyond the threshold for nucleating continental ice sheets. If emissions are constant after 2100 and are not stabilized before 2250, global climate by 2300 might enter the hothouse world of the early Eocene (~50 million years ago) with its multiple global warming events and no large ice sheets at the poles.
Credit
Westerhold et al., CENOGRID
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