<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/14/how-does-today-extreme-heat-compare-with-earth-past-climate>
"Climate records are tumbling at a galloping pace. The world has just
experienced its hottest ever single day on record, amid a string of
record-breaking months that followed the planet’s hottest recorded year. But
how does this cascade of new highs in the era of modern record-keeping compare
with the Earth’s deeper history?
Those who piece together what past climates were like in eras before
thermometers and satellites – a practice known as palaeoclimatology – find that
today’s temperatures are, when narrowly viewed, unremarkable. For example, the
Eocene, an epoch lasting from 56m years to 34m years ago, was “screamingly
hotter” than today, by about 10-15C, according to Matthew Huber, an expert in
historical climates at Purdue University in the US.
But, crucially, in the timespan in which humans evolved and formed organised
societies, today’s global climate – a bit more than 1C hotter on average than
it was in the preindustrial period before people started burning huge
quantities of fossil fuels – is unparalleled. It has not been as hot as this
for at least 125,000 years, prior to the last ice age, and most likely longer,
potentially going back at least 1m years.
“Humans have not faced a climate like this over our long history; we are
starting to hit temperatures that are unprecedented,” said Huber. “It’s not
like we will all become extinct, but we are messing with a thermostat that is
pushing [us] outside a window we have been in during all of human
civilisation.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
