This is a depiction of Earth during the Pliocene Era.
"...After five years, they had compiled the first carefully dated and cross-referenced archive of the period's primeval soils and fossil plant matter, they reported.
Geochemical analysis of iron oxides and isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen revealed telling evidence of temperature variation, rainfall patterns and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels through 40 million years of the Paleozoic, covering the period of major climate warming. They correlated those findings with an analysis of shellfish fossil remains, to compare those findings against marine carbon levels."
It is an extraordinary improvement on past estimates," said Yale paleoclimate expert Mark Pagani, who was not involved in the research.
Instead of a relatively gradual transition from a cold world to a warm one, as many scientists had believed occurred, Montanez and her colleagues found fever spikes of climate change correlated with fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide, like a seismometer graph of the myriad tremors before and after a major earthquake. "
CO2 goes up and temperature goes up. It drops and temperature drops," Montanez said.
"It suggests," she said, "that the normal behavior in major climate transitions is instability, erratic temperature behavior and carbon dioxide changes."
The Pliocene was a time when Earth was younger and hotter with more active volcanoes. The amount of carbon dioxide Dr. Montanez is referrring to "...Over several million years, carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere increased from about 280 parts per million to 2,000 ppm,..." is unheard of today. At levels of 380 ppm we are seeing drastic changes in the opportunity for survival of biota including threats by widespread droughts. This is not a minor issue. This is a threat to the very planet we all live on.
