Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Older Peron warm and wet, global sea levels were 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) higher than the twentieth-century average 3900: 5.9 kiloyear event dry and cold. 3500: End of the African humid period, Neolithic Subpluvial in North Africa, expands Sahara Desert 3000 – 0: Neopluvial in North America 3,200–2,900: Piora Oscillation, cold ...
The geologic temperature record are changes in Earth's environment as determined from geologic evidence on multi-million to billion (10 9) year time scales. The study of past temperatures provides an important paleoenvironmental insight because it is a component of the climate and oceanography of the time.
High global temperatures contributed to diversification of terrestrial species during the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and also led to warm stratified oceans during the Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE-2). [12] Depiction of average planetary temperature of Earth over the past 500 million years.
The warm period was followed by a gradual decline, of about 0.1 to 0.3 °C per millennium, until about two centuries ago. However, on a sub-millennial scale, there were regional warm periods superimposed on this decline. [2] [3] [4] For other temperature fluctuations, see temperature record. For other past climate fluctuation, see paleoclimatology.
During the 1,900 years before the 20th century, it is likely that the next warmest period was from 950 to 1100, with peaks at different times in different regions. This has been called the Medieval Warm Period, and some evidence suggests widespread cooler conditions during a period around the 17th century known as the Little Ice Age.
The Last Interglacial was one of the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, with temperatures comparable to and at times warmer (by up to on average 2 degrees Celsius) than the contemporary Holocene interglacial, [4] [5] with the maximum sea level being up to 6 to 9 metres higher than at present, with global ice volume likely also being ...
The second is a shift in the tilt of Earth's axis, or obliquity. The third is the wobbling motion of Earth's axis, or precession. [1] In the Southern Hemisphere, warmer summers occur when the lower-half of Earth is tilted toward the Sun and the planet is nearest the Sun in its elliptical orbit. Cooler summers occur when Earth is farthest from ...
In any case, significant terrestrial ice sheets and sea-ice did not exist during the late Paleocene through early Eocene. [13] Earth surface temperatures gradually increased by about 6 °C from the late Paleocene through the early Eocene. [13] Superimposed on this long-term, gradual warming were at least three (and probably more) "hyperthermals".