Carbon emissions surpass period of extreme warming 56 million years ago

Undoubtedly, rate of planet-warming carbon dioxide is increasing at an alarming rate. A study has suggested that today’s carbon-release rate is highest since dinosaur era. In other words, we are releasing carbon into the planet’s oceans and atmosphere faster than in the past many decades.

Today, the release rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) is roughly 10 times faster than an event some 56 million years ago when earth had extreme warming temperature, as per the study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. The new figure should be taken as a warning for how much climate change may affect earth and earthlings in coming times, the study added.

The study comes a few days after a research revealed that first two months of 2016 were among the hottest months on record. A combined research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA found that February 2016 had the highest average temperature in last many decades.

The new study led by Richard Zeebe, a professor from the University of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, examined changes in earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide since last at least 66 million years.

“If you look over the entire Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, the only event that we know of at the moment, that has a massive carbon release, and happens over a relatively short period of time, is the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)”, said Zeebe. It was important to look back in the history to find out what humans are doing with the atmosphere today, professor Zeebe added.

If compared with the PETM, it is found that today’s carbon emissions have been topping even those of the end of dinosaur age, Zeebe informed.