CLIMATE RECOVERY

Nov. 2, 2021

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently warned that the average global temperatures would breach the two degrees Celsius mark by 2100 compared to pre-industrial times.

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To understand how quickly the climate can recover from this warming, an international team studied a global temperature rise that occurred 56 million years ago.
Their findings show that it took about 20,000 to 50,000 years for the climate to stabilise after the rise of five to eight degrees Celsius. The results were published recently in the journal Science Advances.
About 56 million years ago, our Earth experienced a natural period of global warming triggered by a volcanic eruption. This period was known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and there were huge amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.
This caused about 8°C surface ocean warming in the high latitudes. Several studies have shown that during this period ocean acidification caused mass extinctions in the deep ocean and there were changes in the biota in the surface ocean.

Source : Indian Express