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Earth's forests took 100,000 years to recover from the last climate shock — this one is moving 10 times faster
Fifty-six million years ago, Earth’s forests reached a tipping point. They had grown dense, lush canopies at the start of one of Earth’s most intense episodes of greenhouse warming. But those canopies began to thin.
TL;DR
- During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 56 million years ago, Earth experienced intense greenhouse warming.
- Forest canopies thinned significantly due to heat and drought, losing up to 60% of their cover in places like southern Wyoming.
- Recovery of forest canopies took well over 100,000 years, highlighting the long-term impact of climate change on ecosystems.
- The study used fossilized leaf cuticles to reconstruct ancient forest canopy density by analyzing epidermal cell shapes.
- Modern human-caused carbon emissions and warming are unfolding much faster than the PETM event, challenging forest resilience.
- While forests can recover, the speed of current climate change may push them beyond thresholds from which recovery takes tens of thousands of years.