A climate scientist at Tohoku University in Japan doesn't believe that the mass extinction event will be as bad as the previous five. Not for a long time.
Over the course of 540 million years, Earth has lost most of its species.
Mass extinction events can be triggered by asteroids or volcanic activity, and they follow closely on the heels of climate change.
The stability of Earth's average surface temperature was found to be a linear effect.
The greatest mass extinctions occurred when temperatures went from 7C to 9C.
The previous estimates suggested that a temperature of 5.2C would cause a major marine mass extinction, similar to the previous big five.
By the end of the century, global warming is expected to increase surface temperatures by as much as 4%.
Kaiho predicts that the 9C global warming won't show up in the Anthropocene until 2500.
Kaiho isn't denying that climate change is causing extinctions on land and in the sea, but he doesn't expect the same proportion of losses as before.
Climate change is one of the factors that puts species at risk. It's important that it occurs quickly.
95 percent of known species were killed off in the largest mass extinction event in Earth's history. Today's warming is being caused by human emissions of fossil fuels.
It is possible that more species will die off in Earth's sixth extinction event not because of the magnitude of warming but because the changes happened so quickly that many species could not adapt.
Kaihu admits thatPrediction of the future anthropogenic extinction using only surface temperature is difficult because the causes of mass extinction differ from causes of anthropogenic extinction.
Many species are doomed unless we can stop climate change.
There is debate about the exact percentage of losses and the timing of them.
The study was published in ageosciences
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