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ALBANY, NY – As we continue to experience one of the warmest winters on record in the Northeast, the New York State paleontologist is reporting new research suggesting that high sea levels leading to “global hyperwarming” are much more important than carbon dioxide levels in predicting global climate change.

Dr. Ed Landing, state paleontologist and curator of paleontology at the New York State Museum, has recently published his findings online in “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,” an international journal that publishes high quality and multi-disciplinary, original studies with global implications in the field of palaeo-environmental geology.

Since the middle 1800s scientists have considered high carbon dioxide levels to be a greenhouse gas and a driver of higher global temperatures. However, Landing’s study of the rock succession in New York state shows that periodic extreme temperatures, with oceans reaching 100 F, occurred within “greenhouse” intervals. He terms these “global hyperwarming” times, and shows that they correspond to intervals of very high sea-levels.

“Global hyperwarming” is a previously unrecognized climate condition. As sea levels rise, Landing’s research suggests that with the predicted melting ofpolar ice caps, the continents will reflect less sun light back to space and less reflective shallow seas will store heat and warm as they overlap the land.Warming seas willrapidly work to increase global temperatures and heat the world ocean. This leads to a feedback that further expands ocean volume, with heating,and furtheraccelerates both global warming and sea-level rise. In the course of this feedback, marine water circulation and oxygenation fall due in part to the fact thathot waters hold less oxygen.

Landing firstrecognized the imprint of "global hyperwarming"in 520 to 440 million-year-old, shallow to deep-water rocks in eastern New York and from other information received on localities worldwide. This time interval shows nine intervals of extreme sea-levels that coveredmuch of NorthAmerica and other ancient continents. In all cases, strong sea-level rises, which sometimes drove marine shorelines into the upper Midwest,are accompanied by the spread of hot, low oxygen marine water largely devoid of animal life down into the deep sea and across the continents.

Landing’s study may help predict the future. A 300-foot sea-level rise, which would result from melting the Greenland and Antarctica ice caps, is as great as the ancient sea-level rises documented by Landing and other scientists 520 to 460 million years ago. This sea-level rise would also lead to a warming and expansion of the ocean waters resulting in a rise of shorelines to 500 feet above present, basically covering the non-mountainous U.S. to northern Wisconsin. Even worse, in the case of New York, the Earth’s rotation would force a rise of the west Atlantic to 650 feet above present sea levels.

The full article on Landing’s research is at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.09.005. While working at the State Museum since 1981, Landing has authored six books, 13 New York State Museum bulletins, 200 articles and field trip guides and has received more than a dozen competitive grants. In 2009 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), a high honor bestowed upon a select group of geologists nationwide

Founded in 1836, the State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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