Earth Headed for Warmest Period in 55 Million Years?

“Our carbon dioxide emissions are risking biological, chemical and climate changes of a magnitude that has not been seen for more than 50 million years. There was ecological devastation, but new species rose from the ashes. Luckily for us, our ancient primate ancestors were winners. Who knows who the winners and losers will be in the next go round?”

– Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Carnegie Institution

December 7, 2006 Stanford, California – An extraordinary burst of global warming that occurred around 55 million years ago dramatically reversed Earth’s pattern of ocean currents. That global warming event is called the “Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum,” or PETM.” Back then, Earth’s average surface global temperature rose rapidly by about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) in less than ten thousand years.

In a new December 8, 2006, Science journal report, scientists Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, and Mark Pagani, Ph.D., research team leader at Yale University, report they have found that the Earth’s global warming 55 million years ago might have resulted from the Earth climate’s “high sensitivity to a long-term release of carbon.” This finding contradicts the position held by many climate-change skeptics that the Earth system is resilient to carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

For some years, scientists have known that the ancient global warming event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, caused a massive release of carbon. The temperature rise on Earth lasted for 170,000 years and caused profound changes to the world’s rainfall patterns, made the oceans acidic, and affected oceanic and terrestrial plant and animal life, including spawning the rise of our modern primate ancestors.

“But understanding just how much carbon was responsible for the temperature increase and where it came from remained elusive,” reports Carnegie Institution. “Now the new calculations used data from carbon found in fossils of ancient land plants and tiny marine organisms known as plankton. ‘We can tell that the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere and ocean was more or less the same as what is available today as coal, oil and gas,’ Caldeira explains. ‘The carbon heated up the Earth for over 100,000 years. If the climate was as insensitive to CO2 as the climate skeptics claim, there would be no way to make the Earth so warm for so long.'”

The source of the ancient carbon spike is still a mystery. It might have come from massive fires burning coal and other ancient plant material, or it could have come from “burps” of methane from the continental shelves.

Caldeira: “By examining fossils and ancient sediments on the sea floor, we can see that something very unusual happened to Earth’s carbon cycle. At the same time, the climate near the North Pole became like Miami, Florida. We can tell it did not take all that much carbon to make this change in climate. If ancient methane ‘burps’ really occurred, as many believe, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration would warm the Earth by over 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 degrees Celsius). If that’s what happened, we could now be in for a mighty toasty future.”

If the source of the carbon release was ancient plant material, calculations indicate that for each doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration, the Earth would warm at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 degrees Celsius), and possibly twice this much. If ancient methane was the cause, as many believe, our current situation is even more dire. The methane would have become carbon dioxide in the atmosphere within decades. The current research indicates that much less methane would have been available to cause climate change 55 million years ago, which means that the climate of the Earth is even more sensitive to added CO2 than originally thought.

With a continuation of current trends in the use of coal, oil and gas, natural background atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected to double around the middle of this 21st Century. The ancient emissions 55 million years ago are comparable to the CO2 that is expected to be emitted from human activities over this and coming centuries. So, if human-produced carbon emissions continue as they are, there could be a very serious impact on Earth’s surface life and species evolution.

Caldeira: “The last time carbon was emitted to the atmosphere on the scale of what we are doing today, there were winners and losers. There was ecological devastation, but new species rose from the ashes. Luckily for us, our ancient primate ancestors were winners. Who knows who the winners and losers will be in the next go round?”

“Our carbon dioxide emissions are risking biological, chemical and climate changes of a magnitude that has not been seen for more than 50 million years. Our work provides even more incentive to develop the clean energy sources that can provide for economic growth and development without risking the natural world that is our endowment.”

More Information:

For further information about global warming, please see the Earthfiles Archives:

• 11/09/2006 — Outer Space Sunshade to Cool Earth in Global Warming?
09/09/2006 — Methane – Another Threat in Global Warming
08/23/2006 — Solar Cycle 24 – Headed for Intense X Flares by 2010-2012?
08/19/2006 — Repair of Earth’s Ozone Layer Has Slowed
07/18/2006 — 2006 – Hottest Year So Far in U. S. History
06/28/2006 — Half Cats in Destin, Florida, and Beheaded Animals in Rochester, N. Y.
06/24/2006 — “High Confidence” Earth Is Warmest in 400 Years – Maybe Even 2,000 Years or More
04/08/2006 — Recent Caribbean Coral Reef Die-Off Biggest Ever Seen
03/17/2006 — Planet Earth’s Ice Melt
02/20/2006 — Mysterious Deaths of Whales in Mexico
11/18/2005 — Is the Sun Heating Up?
10/07/2005 — Warmer Sea Surfaces and Increased Wind Power Are Making Hurricanes Stronger
09/29/2005 — 2005 Arctic Summer Ice Melt – Largest On Record
09/23/2005 — 9 X-Class Solar Flares Between September 7 – 19, 2005
09/23/2005 — Phenomenon of “Instant” Hurricanes in 2005
08/26/2005 — What Is Killing Amphibians Around the World?
08/26/2005 — Another Cattle Mutilation in Canada
08/18/2005 — Unusual Summer Swarm of Arkansas Copperheads
08/05/2005 — Scientists Puzzled by “Bizarre” Pacific Coast Die-offs in 2005
05/11/2005 — Greenland Sea Cold Water Re-Cycling Has Nearly Stopped. Britain Expected to Become Cooler.
05/07/2005 — Did Milky Way Gas and Dust Turn Earth Into Icy Snowball Four Times?
03/25/2005 — Glow of Distant Worlds Seen For First Time
02/26/2005 — Collapse of Societies: From Easter Island to Iraq – to Western World?
02/03/2005 — Kyoto Protocol Goes Into Effect February 16, 2005. British Scientists Warn Global Temperatures Could Climb Higher Than Earlier Estimates
01/22/2005 — From U. S. to Arctic – A Sea Change in the Weather
01/15/2005 — Bull and Cow Mutilations Northwest of Corpus Christi, Texas
12/31/2004 — Abrupt Climate Change Occurred Worldwide 5,200 Years Ago
11/02/2004 — North Pole Summers Without Ice?
10/15/2004 — Ever-Increasing Carbon Dioxide Build-Up in Atmosphere Since 1958
10/06/2004 — Is NRC Making Terrorist Work Easier? Radioactive Material Sites On U. S. Government Website
09/17/2004 — Cat 4 and 5 Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Ivan in Four Weeks – Unprecedented in American Recorded Weather History
08/27/2004 — Global Warming Impact On Birds – More Extinctions Expected
08/14/2004 — Oceans Are Absorbing A Lot of Greenhouse CO2. As Chemistry Changes, What Happens to Sea Life?
08/01/2004 — Sixth Straight Year Hundreds of Birds Die at Roestler Lake, North Dakota.
02/27/2004 — Abrupt Climate Change: Scenario from A Pentagon-Commissioned Report
02/23/2004 — Is There Liquid Water on Martian Surface?
01/02/2004 — Earth’s Speeded Rotation Puzzles Scientists
11/29/2003 — Glaciers Are Melting Around the World So Fast That Water Supplies Could Be Threatened
10/29/2003 — Fifth Intense Solar X-Flare – What’s Happening On the Sun?
05/30/2003 — Scientists Surprised by Common House Fly Fossils in Antarctica
01/05/2003 — What Are the Grooves in the Martian South Pole?
12/14/2002 — Arctic Rivers’ Fresh Water Flows Could Change Atlantic Ocean Current
11/14/2002 — What Happened 12,000 Years Ago That Killed So Many Animals?
10/21/2002 — Mt. Kilimanjaro’s Ice Cap Is Melting Fast
08/27/2002 — August 2002: Severe to Moderate Drought in 37 States
07/20/2002 — Extinctions of Earth Life Are Accelerating Rapidly
06/04/2002 — EPA Admits Humans Burning Fossil Fuels A Big Factor in Global Warming
03/30/2002 — Drought Worsens in United States
03/21/2002 — Antarctic Peninsula Is Melting – And So Is Arctic Ice
02/13/2002 — January 2002 Warmest On Record For Whole World
01/30/2002 — Latest Satellite Data Shows Surprisingly Thicker Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica
01/05/2002 — Global Warming Update – Could Increasing Carbon Dioxide Gas Be Transformed Into Limestone?
12/22/2001 — Scientists Warn That Climate and Earth Life Can Change Rapidly
06/09/2001 — Environmental Updates and Colt Mutilated in Leitchfield, Kentucky
05/25/2001 — Federal GAO Report Does Not Rule Out Cell Phone Dangers
04/18/2001 — April Environmental Updates
03/24/2001 — Alps Permafrost Melting
03/21/2001 — Earth Hasn’t Been This Warm Since the Pliocene 3 Million Years Ago
03/04/2001 — Disappearing Glaciers – Evidence of A Rapidly Warming Earth
02/25/2001 — Environmental Updates
02/18/2001 — Environmental Updates and Mysterious Deaths of 2000 Atlantic Brant Geese
02/07/2001 — 94% Decline In Aleutian Islands Sea Otter Population
01/28/2001 — U. N. Global Warming Forecast: Up to 10.5 Degrees F. Hotter At End of 21st Century
01/07/2001 — Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Punched 22 Miles Through Earth’s Entire Crust
11/26/2000 — Environmental Updates
10/30/2000 — Science, Environment and Medical Updates
09/10/2000 — Arctic Ice Melt Threatens Polar Bears
09/10/2000 — Largest-Ever Antarctic Ozone Hole
07/09/2000 — The “Cell from Hell” Is Back in North Carolina Estuaries
07/02/2000 — Brown Tide Devastating Long Island’s Great South Bay Shellfish
06/17/2000 — Spring 2000 – Hottest On Record in U. S.
05/07/2000 — Serious Drought in the Great Lakes
04/20/2000 — Severe Arctic Ozone Loss and Deep Ocean Warming
03/12/2000 — Environmental Updates and Mysterious Fires Near Scott, Arkansas
01/13/2000 — Computer Projections About Earth Weather 2000-2100
01/09/2000 — Global Warming Alert from NOAA and U.K.
12/25/1999 — Y2K Nuclear Concern and Global Warming Update
09/26/1999 — Could Ancient Microbes in Polar Ice Cause Epidemics?
07/25/1999 — Maryland Fish Kills; Global Warming; and Warm Oceans and Disease
06/04/1999 — Global Warming Linked to Increasingly Warmer and Wetter Winters in Europe & Western North America
05/05/1999 — Two Antarctic Ice Shelves Almost Gone
04/09/1999 — Strange Lights In Missouri
02/28/1999 — Chickadee Beak Deformities in Alaska
01/24/1999 — Global Warming

Websites:

Carnegie Institution, Dept. of Global Ecology: http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/CIWDGE.HTM