The sea rose 8 meters, the last time the planet had the current temperature, according to experts – NTN24

Scientists have spent years investigating the impact of climate change for the millions of people living on the coast, a question whose answer may lie in the past: the last time the Earth had the current temperature, the sea rose about eight meters.

the Geological Survey US is gathering data on marine fossils from around the world to know what can happen if global warming melts the ice sheets that now cover Antarctica and Greenland, in an international study in which only involved a European scientist. professor of Biology at the University of Las Palmas Joaquín Meco

And these fossil records point on the same line : there are remains of corals and shellfish in different continents levels situated between eight and 24 meters above the current sea level

in the case of Spain, the US Geological Survey has been set. in the Atlantic archipelago of the Canary islands because of two islands (Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura) there are layers with fossils that prove the last two moments of greatest rise of the oceans between ice Age and ice Age: 481,000 and 130,000 years ago respectively

<. p> Meco told Efe that if the planet’s history is examined through a graph of temperatures, these two moments of the Quaternary be the only ones that would show peaks above average levels that today mark thermometers worldwide.

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This researcher who has spent his entire career working on the study of marine paleoclimates, he said that for all the world’s oceans will be placed 130,000 years ago about eight meters above its current level, they had to melt all the ice in Greenland and part of Antarctica.

that reference, he adds, may shed light on the disaster that can cause climate change if it continues at its current pace, because in the geological past of the Earth there is no other time temperatures it seems more to this interglacial period that occurred between 130,000 and 120,000 years ago.

With one exception, he says. Then, the oceans, the great climate regulators were about three degrees warmer average, as is shown by the presence of fossils own marine fauna warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea in the Canary Islands and even in northern latitudes, in . the Mediterranean

the project Geological Survey United States with the collaboration Meco has calculated how much it would raise the sea if all the ice covering the earth melted: only glaciers in the Himalayas, the Alps, Andes and other large mountain ranges have enough water to raise the average ocean meter.

If the Greenland ice sheet has melted, the seas of the planet would grow seven meters and if Antarctica melts, the oceans would rise hit 55 more meters (an equivalent height, for example, the Coliseum in Rome).

can this happen? Scientists have no doubt that can happen, they do not know is how much is going to melt the layers of ice on the planet and at what speed.

To those to whom a rising seas almost 65 meters seems to them an exaggeration, Joaquín Meco reminds them that their level is already high 120 meters since the last ice Age, 20,000 years occurred recently, when Homo sapiens began to paint the ceiling of the cave of Altamira.

Collaboration EFE.