Has the earth ever been hot like now?

Have you ever traveled in the North Pole? How does it feel to be cold outside? But maybe if you lived at a time 56 million years ago, you might have a different feeling.

That's because tens of millions of years ago, the Earth fell into a global warming period and is also known as the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum . During this period, the Earth's temperature was so hot that both poles reached temperatures near the tropical zone. In other words both today's Arctic and Antarctica also have hot temperatures and tropical landscapes.

The Earth has experienced extremely hot periods many times. Especially the poles also froze and thawed countless. Now the Earth is heating up but very different from the old days. It is also a hot form like the old days but now there is more impact of climate change, leading to a record high temperature every month.

The Earth's climate has fluctuated naturally over the past tens of thousands of years, and the planets around the Sun have gradually changed, leading to a change from season to light. Part of the result of these fluctuations is that the Earth experienced ice ages and warmer periods.

But to create a Paleo-Eocene breed would need more than a change in the tilt of the Earth axis or its movement around the Sun. But besides, another invisible culprit could create the typical Paleo-Eocene climate, which is CO ₂ .

Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are responsible for causing high temperatures throughout the planet's surfaces during the Paleo-Eocene period. But how to increase CO2 concentration without human appearance? Scientists seem not quite sure.

Sébastien Castelltort, a geologist at the University of Geneva, said the cause may be due to a volcanic activity that is strong, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The CO ₂ then covered the Earth and caused sunlight to escape, thereby causing the Earth to warm up, freeing the glaciers at the poles. When the two polar ice sheets dissipate, methane gas, a greenhouse gas that is many times more toxic than CO2, accidentally escapes.

Greenhouse gases are primarily responsible for causing high temperatures throughout the planet's surfaces during the Paleo-Eocene period.

For example, the extinction event in the Permian-Triassic period , occurred several million years before the dinosaurs rose and mastered the planet. It is really a major climate disaster for Earth. This warming event took place 252 million years ago and was extremely serious. This event is caused by volcanic activity that causes climate chaos and destruction of many species.

Paleontologist Stuart Sutherland of the University of British Columbia told Live Science that serious drought occurred at the time, and all plants died and the Saharah spread across the continent. The temperature at that time was almost beyond the tolerance of all species.

It is unclear how Permian-Triassic greenhouse gas concentrations are but they are much higher than today. Some climate models predict that the greenhouse gas concentration may then have reached 3,500 parts per million ppm. Meanwhile, there are now only 400ppm.

But to lead to the Permian-Triassic extinction event , the Earth has spent thousands of years in order to reach such a terrible temperature. Specifically, according to some studies, time can last up to 150 thousand years. In the Paleo-Eocene period, the temperature can increase extremely fast when it takes only 10-20 thousand years to achieve such a terrible temperature.

The warming up on Earth today seems to take only 150 years.

That is the big difference between climate change and the situation of global warming today compared to the phenomenon of global warming in the past. Extremely fast and extreme developments make the consequences of climate change now extremely difficult to predict.

Castelltort said that his concern now is not only that the planet is gradually heating up but also that we do not know everything is turning so fast that people cannot adapt.

There is no climate expert who dares to assert that the current warming speed of the Earth does not have any serious consequences, he said. Only we don't know how the future climate scenario will happen.

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