 | This shows estimates of global average surface air temperature over the ~540 My of the Phanerozoic, since the first major proliferation of complex life forms on our planet. A substantial achievement of the last 30 years of climate science has been the production of a large set of actual measurements of temperature history (from physical proxies), replacing much of the earlier geological induction (i.e. informed guesses). The graph shows selected proxy temperature estimates, which are detailed below.
Because many proxy temperature reconstructions indicate local, not global, temperature -- or ocean, not air, temperature -- substantial approximation may be involved in deriving these global temperature estimates. As a result, the relativities of some of the plotted estimates are approximate, particularly the early ones. |