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Key points

• During Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55.8 million years ago temperatures rose 5 degrees C
• Scientists analysed marine fossils to determine rate of carbon emissions at this time
• Rate of carbon emissions was 10 times slower than current emissions

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, indicated the pace of emissions even eclipses the onset of the biggest known natural surge in fossil records, 56 million years ago, that was perhaps driven by a release of frozen stores of greenhouse gases beneath the seabed.

The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) event — which drove temperatures up by an estimated 5 degrees Celsius and damaged marine life by making the oceans acidic — is often seen as a parallel to the risks from the current build-up of carbon in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

On present trajectories, greenhouse gas emissions will heat up Earth 3 to 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

“Of all the changes we have seen in 66 million years, this event is the one that most looks like anthropogenic, or man-made, warming,” said study co-author Professor Andy Ridgwell, a paleo-climatologist at the University of Bristol.

The parallels are striking: massive carbon emissions, followed by rapid global warming and major loss of species.

Fifty-six million years ago, those extinctions took place mainly in the ocean. Today the so-called “sixth great extinction” is underway both in the sea and on land………http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-22/carbon-emissions-‘highest-in-66-million-years’/7266032