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Humans may be reversing the climate clock by 50 million years

Quarta-feira, 12.12.18

[Com um estudo levado a cabo por um grupo de investigadores da Universidade do Wisconsin-Madison (EUA), a sugerir uma tendência de arrefecimento da Terra recuando às condições Climáticas registadas há 50.000.000 de anos (milhões), num processo com uma aceleração fantástica levando apenas 200 anos (centenas) a concluir-se: dentro de uma dúzia de anos com a Terra a recuar a um período muito semelhante ao do MID-PLIOCENE (recuando mais de 3.000.000 de anos); para de seguida e dentro de 132 anos (nada se fazendo entretanto) se poder comparar (o seu clima) ao período do EOCENO (quente e quase livre de gelo) registado há 50 milhões de anos.]

 

Date:

December 10, 2018

 

Source:

University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

Summary:

Our future on Earth may also be our past. Researchers show that humans are reversing a long-term cooling trend tracing back at least 50 million years. And it's taken just two centuries.

 

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Future climate analogs for the years 2020, 2050, 2100 and 2200 according to three well-established models

If greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, the study says, the climate will continue to warm until it begins to resemble the Eocene in 2100

 

Our future on Earth may also be our past

 

In a study published Monday (Dec. 10, 2018) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that humans are reversing a long-term cooling trend tracing back at least 50 million years. And it's taken just two centuries.

                                                               

2030, Earth's climate is expected to resemble that of the mid-Pliocene, going back more than 3 million years in geologic time. Without reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions, our climates by 2150 could compare to the warm and mostly ice-free Eocene, an epoch that characterized the globe 50 million years ago.

 

"If we think about the future in terms of the past, where we are going is uncharted territory for human society," says the study's lead author, Kevin Burke, who conducted the work while a graduate student in the lab of paleoecologist John "Jack" Williams, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We are moving toward very dramatic changes over an extremely rapid time frame, reversing a planetary cooling trend in a matter of centuries."

In their paper, the researchers try to strike a balance between alarm and optimism. On the one hand, Earth is headed into the unknown in our children's and grandchildren's lifetimes. On the other, life has long proven to be resilient. And, Williams says, in many places we are moving away from fossil fuels toward more sustainable and carbon-free energy sources. But more needs to be done.

 

We've seen big things happen in Earth's history -- new species evolved, life persists and species survive. But many species will be lost, and we live on this planet," says Williams. "These are things to be concerned about, so this work points us to how we can use our history and Earth's history to understand changes today and how we can best adapt."

 

(publicado/inglês: sciencedaily.com/Universidade de Wisconsin-Madison/10.12.2018)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 18:23