800,000 Years of Climate Change

The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since the Industrial Revolution, have been climbing to huge levels. Humans are responsible for giant growth of CO₂ levels.

Antarctic temperature changes across the 800,000 years were very similar to globally-averaged temperatures, except that ice age temperature changes over Antarctica were roughly twice that of the global average.

Scientists refer to this as polar amplification (data from Parrenin et al. 2013; Snyder et al. 2016; Bereiter et al. 2015).   Image credit Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram

While it’s true that Earth’s temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated, the reality is that humans’ greenhouse emissions since the industrial revolution have put us in uncharted territory.

via The Conversation