The Miocene Climatic Optimum
The last sustained warm interval before the modern cold world — forests in Antarctica for the final time.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2.3 million years
- Known to
- ± 300 thousand years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Between about 17 and 14.7 million years ago global temperatures rise several degrees above the early Miocene, deep ocean water warms, and the Antarctic ice sheet retreats far enough that tundra vegetation returns to parts of the continent. Carbon dioxide is estimated in the region of 400 to 600 parts per million — values the modern atmosphere is now approaching. Because the MCO is the most recent time the Earth sustained that state, it has become the closest palaeoclimate analogue for where current emissions are heading.