Study: Earth now the warmest it's been in 120,000 years

Carolyn Snyder's doctoral,
dissertation shows earth is
its hottest for two million years.

A new study paints a picture of an Earth that is warmer than it has been in about 120,000 years, and is locked into eventually hitting its hottest mark in more than 2 million years.

As part of her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, Carolyn Snyder, now a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, created a continuous 2 million year temperature record, much longer than a previous 22,000 year record. Snyder’s temperature reconstruction, published Monday in the journal Nature, doesn’t estimate temperature for a single year, but averages 5,000-year time periods going back a couple million years.

Snyder based her reconstruction on 61 different sea surface temperature proxies from across the globe, such as ratios between magnesium and calcium, species makeup and acidity. But the further the study goes back in time, especially after half a million years, the fewer of those proxies are available, making the estimates less certain, she said.

Read the CBSNews story - “Study: Earth now the warmest it's been in 120,000 years.”

Today's greenhouse gas levels could result in up to 7 degrees of warming

Carolyn Synder - possible 7
degrees of warming.

The longest continuous reconstruction of the Earth's surface climate suggests that current greenhouse gas levels could commit the planet to as much as 7 degrees of warming in the next 1000 years.

The study, Evolution of global temperature over the past 2 million years, was conducted by Stanford University then doctoral student Carolyn Snyder, and marks the longest continuous reconstruction of the Earth's surface climate to date.

It comes as a national poll found public support for federal government-led action on climate change has bounced back, with increased support for renewable energy production.

The Climate Institute's Climate of the Nation poll found 65 per cent of Australians want their country to lead the world on climate change solutions, a marked increase since the time of divisive debates about the Gillard government's carbon tax.

Read Lucy Cormack’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Today's greenhouse gas levels could result in up to 7 degrees of warming.”