Scientists Have Issued a Dire Warning About a Massive Extinction Event Brought on by Climate Change

A recent study on climate modeling provides an unsettling look into the future of virtually every species on the planet.

Over the course of the last half a billion years or thereabouts, there have likely been multiple big extinction events that have affected life on Earth.

These occurrences have most frequently come after broad periods of climatic change, which historically have been brought on by a variety of natural causes, such as asteroids and volcanoes.

Climate change and mass extinction

(Photo : Matt Palmer/Unsplash)

Different plant and animal species have had to adapt to survive each climatic calamity or risk becoming extinct forever, as per The Byte.

However, a recent study by Tohoku University climate scientist Kunio Kaiho, which was published in the journal Biogeosciences last month, indicated that the current human-caused climate change will likely occur over a much shorter period of time than previous extinction events, giving species all over the world much less time to adapt.

Over a period of around 60,000 years, the largest known mass extinction took place.

In Kaiho's worst-case scenario, the Earth might warm by around 16 degrees Fahrenheit in only a few hundred years, which would be sufficient to cause another catastrophe, but give evolution a lot less time to adapt.

Kaiho discovered a linear link between the rate of temperature change and the suffering of plants and animals after evaluating the intensity of each great extinction event.

In essence, it was more difficult for species to live the more intense the planetary heating or cooling.

Despite the fact that these changes won't occur for many hundred years, climate change-related calamities are already affecting people, plants, and animals.

Also Read: What Happened During the Earth's Very First Mass Extinction?

Mass extinction in the ocean area

With climate change comes an elevated danger of extinction for all kinds of species and ecosystems, as per Science.

Particular hazards associated with ocean warming and oxygen depletion are faced by marine animals.

Penn and Deutsch studied the probability of extinction for marine species in relation to ecophysiological constraints and as a result of global warming.

They discovered that based only on ecophysiological constraints, marine systems are expected to undergo mass extinctions comparable to previous big extinctions under business as usual global temperature rises.

However, significantly decreasing global emissions gives significant protection, which highlights the need for quick action to avert potentially disastrous marine extinctions.

Marine biota is at risk from losses of undetermined severity due to global warming.

Using the ecophysiological upper and lower bounds of a variety of animal species and calibration against the fossil record, scientists assessed global and local extinction risks in the ocean over a range of climatic scenarios.

Within a century, species losses due to heat and oxygen depletion alone will be similar to present direct human impacts, leading to a mass extinction comparable to those seen in Earth's history.

This is due to growing greenhouse gas emissions.

The greatest threat to extinction is posed to polar species, although the tropics see a greater reduction in regional biological diversity.

With the marine biodiversity built up during the past 50 million years of evolutionary history, reversing greenhouse gas emission patterns would reduce extinction threats by more than 70%.

Related article: Scientists Find Increasing Tell-Tale Signs of an Upcoming Mass Extinction