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HKU Stephen Hui Geological Museum launches exhibition to showcase 65 million years of climate change
The HKU Stephen Hui Geological Museum launched a permanent exhibition on "Cenozoic Climate Change" on Earth Day (April 22, 2015) to trace the history of climate change back 65 million years to the start of the Cenozoic Era – the advent of the age of mammals, which continues into the present. On display are a range of paleoclimate "proxies", from 3,000 year-old tree rings and marine sediments to fossilised marine micro-organisms and mammals, all of which serve as organic "records" of the planet's climatological past. According to Professor Zong Yongqiang of the HKU Department of Earth Sciences, a look into the earth’s Cenozoic past will reveal short-term "abrupt climate changes" when temperature and CO2 levels rise rapidly, sometimes causing highly disruptive effects including extinctions of certain species. Carbon dioxide concentrations have risen steeply since the beginning of the industrial revolution, which should be alarming to people that climate change should be taken seriously and that the climate could respond in an abrupt and unexpected way.
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