Climate change could trigger mass extinctions with 5.2°C temperature increase.
Climate change has a big impact on biodiversity. By studying marine fossils over 450 million years, scientists found that higher temperatures and faster temperature changes lead to more extinctions. Major extinctions in the past happened when temperatures changed by more than 5.2 °C and at rates faster than 10 °C per million years. Even without other human impacts, a temperature increase of 5.2 °C could cause a mass extinction like the big events in the past.
