And the most important information underlying them is, well, what happened previous times the Earth got warmer?
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Forty million years ago, when the earth was warmer because there was more carbon dioxide in the air as a result of volcanic eruptions, the oceans are thought to have been 70 meters (or 229 feet) higher.
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The Earth is warmer now than during 70 to 80 percent of the time stretching back to the last Ice Age, according to researchers from Oregon State and Harvard universities who studied data from more than 73 global sites.
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This is where researchers helped prove that the Earth is getting warmer.
Current models show that Earth is getting warmer and warmer due to increased emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.
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Scientists have been puzzling for some time over exactly what combination of factors is preventing the earth getting even warmer - maybe changes in solar activity, ocean currents or emissions of aerosol pollution.
The geothermal system heats and cools using piping that goes deep within the earth, where temperatures are warmer than outside air in the winter and cooler in the summer.
In the summertime the pumped water starts off warmer than the earth, but the warmth is absorbed by the earth, and the water comes back up at 57 degrees and is used as an air-conditioning refrigerant.
From about A.D. 900 to 1300 the Earth's temperatures were even warmer than they are today, which is one reason Greenland was named Greenland.
"This paper throws down the gauntlet by showing that Earth is on its way to being warmer, " said David M.
Although scientists have long recognised that mid latitudes were warmer when dinosaurs walked the Earth, some researchers have held to the view - partly based on the previous shell data - that different ocean currents must have operated at the time, leading to warmer polar temperatures but, crucially, cooler tropical temperatures.
The jet stream consists of strong winds about 10 miles above the Earth that control storm paths and mark boundaries between cooler and warmer air.
Regardless of which theory is correct (and both might be wrong), the effect of fewer cosmic rays would be fewer clouds and since clouds tend to cool the earth by reflecting incoming solar radiation away from it a warmer planet.
So if life can thrive in the dark, in isolation, in temperatures no warmer than -13C, where else could it be on Earth and beyond, on distant planets or moons for example?
Nearly a century ago, the British scientist John Tyndall suggested that a fall in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could allow the earth to cool whereas a rise in the carbon dioxide would make it warmer.
Yet all this happened during a century when the Earth's average temperature rose by abut 0.7C - raising the question of whether warmer temperatures and wetter conditions in some regions really would influence malaria transmission.
The ice generally dissipates long before the aircraft lands, but there have been documented cases of blue ice clinging to aircraft surfaces until the aircraft reaches warmer air on approach to landing, then the ice may separate from the aircraft and fall to earth.
These momentarily warmer periods coincided with times when orbital positions of Jupiter and Saturn were relatively close to the Sun and Earth.
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