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Climate change scientists look back 3 million years to look to the future

17.04.2012

To figure out what global warming could bring to Earth, scientists are looking 3 million years into the past. They have concluded that it is Pliocene Epoch, a warm and wet period between 3.15 million and 2.85 million years ago, the slice of time in which the world probably looked and felt much as it does now. Global temperatures and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere were similar to today's climate, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Knowing more about the Pliocene is useful for climate modelers around the world who create sophisticated computer programs to simulate future temperature patterns.

Photo (c) Elido Turco / Flickr