THE NEW CLIMATE

When Ancient Oceans Connect to Our Future Climate

What 10 million years of ocean records reveal about the warming still to come

Image from CANVA

Imagine that you’re standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, waves crashing at your feet, the horizon stretching far beyond sight. Now imagine the ocean not just as water in motion, but as a memory bank holding stories not from centuries or even millennia, but from millions of years ago. Stories of warmth, of ice, of patterns that repeat themselves like an old song.

What if I told you that we, scientists, are starting to understand that those ancient rhythms may tell us something surprising about our future? Here’s the full story.

It’s easy to think of climate change as something modern, born with smokestacks, cars, and power plants. After all, we know well that these things are causing it in the present. But the Earth has seen high carbon dioxide before, and the oceans kept score. Those deep records of sea surface temperature are like scribbled notes left in rocks and sediments, waiting for us to figure out how to read them. And what they show is not only fascinating, but also unsettling.

The puzzle starts with a mismatch. Today, when we measure global warming, we see some regions heating up faster than…