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Today's Climate Change Proves Much Faster Than Changes in Past 65 Million Years
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NASA finds thickest parts of arctic ice cap melting faster. Image: Flickr/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
submitted by Neal Lipner
Climate change is occurring 10 to 100 times faster than in the past and ecosystems will find it hard to adjust
scientificamerican.com - by Anne C. Mulkern and ClimateWire - August 2, 2013
The climate is changing at a pace that's far faster than anything seen in 65 million years, a report out of Stanford University says.
The amount of global temperature increase and the short time over which it's occurred create a change in velocity that outstrips previous periods of warming or cooling, the scientists said in research published in today's Science.
If global temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next century, the rate will be about 10 times faster than what's been seen before, said Christopher Field, one of the scientists on the study. Keeping the temperature increase that small will require aggressive mitigation, he said.
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