Editor's note

While it’s true that Earth’s temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated, the reality is that humans’ greenhouse emissions since the industrial revolution have sent us into uncharted territory.

Our new video animation, made with the help of climatologists Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram, puts the latest burst of carbon dioxide into the context of 800,000 years of prehistoric climate records. Set against that backdrop, the pace of change in temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is clearly anything but natural.

Michael Hopkin

Environment + Energy Editor

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Ice cores are a window into the past hundreds of thousands of years. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Ludovic Brucker

The three-minute story of 800,000 years of climate change with a sting in the tail

Ben Henley, University of Melbourne; Nerilie Abram, Australian National University

The current rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is unprecedented in the past 800,000 years. As our video explains, ice cores track human changes to the atmosphere that are far beyond natural.

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