A team of Earth scientists from the Center for Marine Environmental Studies, the University of Tokyo, The Australian National University, Matsuyama University, Kyoto University, and Shimane University, has found, via a new assessment, that the 1950s is the strongest candidate for the start of the Anthropocene.
In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they compared the three top contenders, and why they chose the 1950s, as the most likely marker.
In 2002, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggested that the Holocene had ended and that a new era in planetary history had begun—the Anthropocene. The new era, he suggested, was one dominated by changes to the planet that had occurred because of human behaviors.
The middle of last century, saw the most measurable global and permanent changes. This was when organic pollutants began showing up all over the world, along with plastics and microplastics. It was also the start of the nuclear age, with evidence of test blasts found everywhere on Earth—and finally, it was the beginning of major impacts resulting from global warming.