In five years' time, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will likely be higher than at any point during the warmest period of the past 3.3 million years. This is what researchers report in the journal "Scientific Reports". The so-called Pliocene, roughly 5.3 to 2.5 million years ago, is considered a blueprint for the climate of the future and is therefore of particular interest to scientists.

"Knowledge of CO₂ levels in the geological past is important because it shows us how the climate system, the polar ice caps, and sea levels have responded to it," says study author Elwyn de la Vega from the University of Southampton. Together with his colleagues, he analysed the shells of tiny fossils that had been deposited millions of years ago in what is now the Caribbean Sea. The data reveal how high the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere was at that time.

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