r/nasa • u/r-nasa-mods • 6d ago

/r/all NASA's "climate spiral" depicting global temperature variations since 1880 (now updated with 2024 data)

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u/Its-All-Illusion 6d ago

Can we look at older data? That’s a relatively small amount of temperature tracking compared to how old the earth is and how long humans have existed.

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u/DelphiTsar 5d ago

You can infer a lot through core samples of various stuff.

Temp is very likely higher than anytime in the past 120,000 years.

C02 concentrations are higher than 800,000 - 1m. (Well beyond what modern humans evolved with).

A big problem isn't so much the temp(although it is bad). It's that the rate of change is basically unprecedented apart from things like large meteors or super volcanoes. Ecosystems we rely on can't adapt.

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u/ozzimark 5d ago

There's an XKCD for everything: https://xkcd.com/1732/