what caused the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum?
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a period of natural global warming that took place almost 56 million years ago. It came at a time when the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was already higher than today, and global temperatures also much warmer. The PETM warming was a roughly 200,000-year long event where global temperatures rose by a further 6â8Â°C, and is thought to have been caused by a massive injection of CO2 into the atmosphere.
[16], which may have caused the contemporaneous mass extinction of benthic foraminifera [17,18].Thisabrupt warming, the PaleoceneâEocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), was also associated with a 2.5â° decrease in the carbon isotopic composition of the global inorganic carbon pool (e.g. [3]). The PETM was first described by Kennett and Stott