Last Time Earth Was This Hot Was 3 Million Years Ago, Leading To A Huge Rise In Sea Levels

It is no news that global warming is rising the water levels by melting polar ice sheets.

However, a recent discovery by researchers has revealed that Earth was as hot as today, around 3 million years ago, causing a considerable rise in sea levels.

Reuters

Published in the journal Nature, scientists discovered and analyzed six geological formations in Art¨¤ Cave on the Spanish island of Mallorca. They extracted 70 samples from the mineral deposits that form on stalagmites and stalactites, (also called as speleothems) that was found between 22.5 and 32 meters above the current sea levels.

Even though the cave is around 100 meters away from the coastline, researchers feel that according to the information from the deposits, they were formed from oceanic buildup over the years as sea levels elevated which resulted in the flooding of the cave around 3 and 4 million years ago.

The lead author of this study Jacky Austermann said in a statement, "Sea level changes at Art¨¤ Cave can be caused by the melting and growing of ice sheets or by uplift or subsidence of the island itself."

The CO2 levels on Earth today are as high as during the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period, around 3.2 and 3.0 million years ago During this time, the temperatures were 2 degrees Celsius to 3 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels (This era was the last time Earth got this hot).

In that era, average sea levels, across the globe were as high as 16.2 meters over the present sea levels.

The data derived from this discovery can help us understand and prepare us for the future, as ice sheets continue to melt and raise the sea levels.

Reuters

Another author to this research, Bogdan Onac said, "We can use knowledge gained from past warm periods to tune ice sheet models that are then used to predict future ice sheet response to current global warming."

According to the researchers, even if we managed to neutralise the CO2 levels on Earth, global sea levels will still rise to previously seen levels, if not higher. According to the data, ice sheets are very sensitive to warming.

The authors also state that the rise in sea-level wouldn't happen overnight and could easily take hundreds to thousands of years. However, they also mention that taking the present-day melt patterns into perspective, this extent of sea-level rise would be mostly due to the collapse of both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets.