Carbon dioxide and global warming are connected together. Scientists have long been saying that the rising carbon dioxide levels create a greenhouse effect, which in turn raises global temperature. Knowing how it happened can be helpful in avoiding a potential disaster. Scientists are now studying how carbon dioxide levels in the past have affected the Earth and its climate.
Scientists have reconstructed how carbon dioxide levels were 300 million years ago, according to Science Daily. With the levels of carbon dioxide today nearly matching that in the past, the changes in the Earth were dramatic. Sea levels rose, polar ice melted and tropical rain forests were affected.
The study has been conducted by Isabel Montanez, a Chancellor's Leadership Professor with the University of California Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and her team. To reconstruct carbon dioxide effect during that time, the team used fossilized leaves and soil-formed minerals.
With the reconstruction, Montanez and her team discovered the effects carbon dioxide had in the past, as levels today approach the same level. She said that not only are plants affected, but plants' response to carbon dioxide has much effect on climate change as well, as the UC Davis site notes. The study is the first to show that plants' response to carbon dioxide levels can have a great impact on the environment.
"Most of our estimates for future carbon dioxide levels and climate do not fully take into consideration the various feedbacks involving forests, so current projections likely underestimate the magnitude of carbon dioxide flux to the atmosphere," Montanez said.
Co-author William DiMichele, Paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institute, said that while plants can be resilient to climate change, there is a threshold and crossing that might have changes that cannot be reversed. The impact of climate change on plants during that time was also not uniform, as different plants reacted differently.
Study co-author Jenny McElwain said that the giant forest trees of that time were the least able to adapt as they were inefficient, while tree ferns were the most adaptable. The study has great relevance today, especially with the report that carbon dioxide levels have hit a new mark. Until the last 100 years carbon dioxide levels stayed in the 200 to 200 ppm range.
