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Source: ONE News -
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Global warming is nothing new even in New Zealand, according to environmental scientists in the country for an international conference.
They are excited to be in a geological hot-spot in north Canterbury where evidence of ancient warming can be found.
Fossil and chemical evidence collected in Waipara reveal global warming's a thing of the past as well as the present.
"These rocks here are like an archive of this incredible warmth that wasn't even so long ago, say 50 or 55 million years ago and these rocks bear witness of that particular phase," says Professor Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University.
The phase in question saw sea-temperatures rise 15 to 20 degrees in just a few million years.
"There was a lot of volcanic activity generating a lot of greenhouse gases - CO2, putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's the best explanation for why it's so much cooler just a few million years earlier," says Chris Hollis of GNS Science.
The experts from around the world are closely inspecting the beautiful Waipara landscape as they believe that its secrets can help them work out if predictions for future global warming are accurate and how that could impact on life on earth.
"We believe that the geologic record help us understand climate processes and helps us understand potentially what our future climate will look like," says Jim Zachos of the University of California.
