Mass species extinction will start in a hundred years, scientists

2017-09-22 13:39

Mass species extinction will start in a hundred years, scientists
The next mass extinction may start in the year 2100 for the high levels of carbon dioxide in the oceans.

This was reported by geophysicist Daniel Rothman from the Massachusetts Institute of technology , reports Rus.Media.

“The data does not say that a disaster will happen the next day. The data suggests that the carbon cycle in the nature will be unstable in the near future, and its behavior cannot be predicted. In the past, such periods of instability led to mass extinctions,” said Rothman.

He studied variations in the carbon cycle that occurred during the past 542 million years.

Rothman determined the increase and decrease of carbon-12 and carbon-13, two isotopes, the number of which varied greatly in Earth’s history.

Based on this he created a database to assess the amount of carbon in the oceans and seas in each historical event. In most of these episodes, the amount of carbon remains below a certain threshold.

However, in some of them, including four of the five recent cases of mass extinction of species, this threshold was violated.

American scientist predicts that it will take about 310 additional gigatons of carbon in the world ocean waters to cross the threshold and enter the “area of instability”.

It is expected that this volume will be in the ocean already by the year 2100.

According to Rothman, the species will soon be extinct. But in the coming hundred years can start the process of extinction of many animal species, which will last about ten thousand years.