Elroy,
now they've gone back 800,000 years. The most interesting find they had in this latest ice core was that to look at a period of time that contained 30 parts per million of CO2, you had to look at spans of time in the 1,000 year range. But in the last 17 years, they found 30 parts per million. That tells us that in no time in the last 800,000 years has the earth seen the levels of concentration of CO2, as we have now. Not only that, but they have proved that climate change always was an effect produced by increasing CO2 concentrations. The way it works is that immediately following rapid rises in CO2 concentrations, we get a rapid rise in global temperatures, followed by a long ice age. We already know that the most recent rapid rise in temperatures is unprecedented and breaks records every day. I wonder whether we will have a follow-on ice age and how long this warming cycle will last, now that CO2 levels are unprecedented?
news.bbc.co.uk
Deep ice tells long climate story
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Norwich
Ice core. Image: J. Schwander/University of Bern
Epica drills have extracted ice from deep under the surface
Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms. |
