Article 3SGF6 What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?

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Enlarge / Map of Antarctica today showing rates of retreat (2010-2016) of the "grounding line" where glaciers lose contact with bedrock underwater, along with ocean temperatures. The lone red arrow in East Antarctica is the Totten Glacier, which alone holds ice equivalent to ~3m (10ft) of sea level rise. (credit: Hannes Konrad et al, University of Leeds UK.)

"What's past is prologue"- Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The year 2100 stands like a line of checkered flags at the climate change finish line, as if all our goals expire then. But like the warning etched on a car mirror: it's closer than it appears. Kids born today will be grandparents when most climate projections end.

And yet, the climate won't stop changing in 2100. Even if we succeed in limiting warming this century to 2C, we'll have CO2 at around 500 parts per million. That's a level not seen on this planet since the Middle Miocene, 16 million years ago, when our ancestors were apes. Temperatures then were about 5 to 8C warmer not 2, and sea levels were some 40 meters (130 feet) or more higher, not the 1.5 feet (half a meter) anticipated at the end of this century by the 2013 IPCC report.

Why is there a yawning gap between end-century projections and what happened in Earth's past? Are past climates telling us we're missing something?

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