If you want to know how rapidly pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will affect future forest ecosystems, you have to look into the distant past. The researchers behind a new study published in Science have done just that, reconstructing the forest canopy of 56 million years ago, during a massive and abrupt emission of carbon into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). For the first time, the study's authors used fossilized leaf cells to reconstruct the tree canopy of the PETM, Earth's most recent period of comparable global warming, with chilling implications for our near future.

If you want to know how rapidly pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will affect future forest ecosystems, you have to look into the distant past. The researchers behind a new study published in Science have done just that, reconstructing the forest canopy of 56 million years ago, during a massive and abrupt emission of carbon into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). For the first time, the study’s authors used fossilized leaf cells to reconstruct the tree canopy of the PETM, Earth’s most recent period of comparable global warming, with chilling implications for our near future.

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