Abstract
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are rapidly rising. To reliably predict the future, researchers have looked at past climates with comparable CO2 concentrations, dating back millions of years. Although these past climates are not perfect analogs of the future, they still provide information about how the climate system functions under increased CO2 concentrations. Because there are no direct observations of past climate states, climate variables need to be inferred from geological data, generally referred to as proxies. On page 116 of this issue, Herbert et al. (1) present a reconstruction of the evolution of atmospheric CO2 concentration over the past 20 million years. Their data provide a consistent explanation for the long-term evolution of global temperature and ice sheets on Earth and give a glimpse into its climate future.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 26-27 |
| Number of pages | 2 |
| Journal | Science |
| Volume | 377 |
| Issue number | 6601 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank A. Lee, C. Carchedi, and J. Smith for assistance with seafloor magnetic anomaly studies. This research used samples and/or data provided by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and its predecessors. IODP is sponsored by NSF and participating countries under management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI) Inc. Supported by NSF grants 1635127 (T.D.H., W.S., C.A.D.) and 1545859 (T.D.H.), the Doherty Fund for Oceanography at Brown University (T.D.H., W.S.), Hong Kong Research Grants Council grant 17305019 (Z.L.), and the Leadership Alliance (A.S.).
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved
Keywords
- MioMIP
- Miocene
- CO2
