5 de abril de 2012

Lições da história natural


Between about 55.5 and 52 million years ago, Earth experienced a series of sudden and extreme global warming events (hyperthermals) superimposed on a long-term warming trend. The first and largest of these events, the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is characterized by a massive input of carbon, ocean acidification and an increase in global temperature of about 5 °C [9°F] within a few thousand years.
So begins an article in the journal Nature that offers an unsettling explanation for one of the great climate mysteries: What caused the PETM?The article’s title gives away the answer: “Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost

Thawing permafrost

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