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Palaeoclimatology

Cooling a continent

The effect of greenhouse gases on climate is underscored by modelling work showing that formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, 34 million years ago, occurred largely because of a fall in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

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Figure 1: Decline in average global temperature over the past 80 million years of Earth's history.

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Correspondence to Peter Barrett.

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Barrett, P. Cooling a continent. Nature 421, 221–223 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/421221a

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