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    Very large release of mostly volcanic carbon during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (2017)
    Nature Research
    In:  Nature, 548 (7669). pp. 573-577.
    Details
    Publication Date: 2020-06-18
    Description: The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum(1,2) (PETM) was a global warming event that occurred about 56 million years ago, and is commonly thought to have been driven primarily by the destabilization of carbon from surface sedimentary reservoirs such as methane hydrates(3). However, it remains controversial whether such reservoirs were indeed the source of the carbon that drove the warming(1,3-5). Resolving this issue is key to understanding the proximal cause of the warming, and to quantifying the roles of triggers versus feedbacks. Here we present boron isotope data-a proxy for seawater pH-that show that the ocean surface pH was persistently low during the PETM. We combine our pH data with a paired carbon isotope record in an Earth system model in order to reconstruct the unfolding carbon-cycle dynamics during the event(6,7). We find strong evidence for a much larger (more than 10,000 petagrams)-and, on average, isotopically heavier-carbon source than considered previously(8,9). This leads us to identify volcanism associated with the North Atlantic Igneous Province(10,11), rather than carbon from a surface reservoir, as the main driver of the PETM. This finding implies that climate-driven amplification of organic carbon feedbacks probably played only a minor part in driving the event. However, we find that enhanced burial of organic matter seems to have been important in eventually sequestering the released carbon and accelerating the recovery of the Earth system(12).
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
    Format: text
    DOI: 10.1038/nature23646
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    OceanRep: Article in a Scientific Journal - peer-reviewed
  • 2
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    Insensitivity of alkenone carbon isotopes to atmospheric CO2 at low to moderate CO2 levels (2019)
    European Geosciences Union
    Details
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Badger, M. P. S., Chalk, T. B., Foster, G. L., Bown, P. R., Gibbs, S. J., Sexton, P. F., Schmidt, D. N., Paelike, H., Mackensen, A., & Pancost, R. D.. Insensitivity of alkenone carbon isotopes to atmospheric CO2 at low to moderate CO2 levels. Climate of the Past, 15(2), (2019):539-554 doi:10.5194/cp-15-539-2019.
    Description: Atmospheric pCO2 is a critical component of the global carbon system and is considered to be the major control of Earth's past, present, and future climate. Accurate and precise reconstructions of its concentration through geological time are therefore crucial to our understanding of the Earth system. Ice core records document pCO2 for the past 800 kyr, but at no point during this interval were CO2 levels higher than today. Interpretation of older pCO2 has been hampered by discrepancies during some time intervals between two of the main ocean-based proxy methods used to reconstruct pCO2: the carbon isotope fractionation that occurs during photosynthesis as recorded by haptophyte biomarkers (alkenones) and the boron isotope composition (δ11B) of foraminifer shells. Here, we present alkenone and δ11B-based pCO2 reconstructions generated from the same samples from the Pliocene and across a Pleistocene glacial–interglacial cycle at Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 999. We find a muted response to pCO2 in the alkenone record compared to contemporaneous ice core and δ11B records, suggesting caution in the interpretation of alkenone-based records at low pCO2 levels. This is possibly caused by the physiology of CO2 uptake in the haptophytes. Our new understanding resolves some of the inconsistencies between the proxies and highlights that caution may be required when interpreting alkenone-based reconstructions of pCO2.
    Description: This study used samples provided by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). We thank Alex Hull and Gemma Bowler for laboratory work, Lisa Schönborn and Günter Meyer for technical assistance, Alison Kuhl and Ian Bull for research support, and Andy Milton at the University of Southampton for maintaining some of the mass spectrometers used in this study. This study was funded by NERC grant NE/H006273/1 to Richard D. Pancost, Daniela N. Schmidt and Gavin L. Foster (which supported Marcus P. S. Badger). We also acknowledge the ERC Award T-GRES and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award to Richard D. Pancost. Gavin L. Foster is also supported by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. We thank Kirsty Edgar for comments on an early draft of the manuscript, the two anonymous reviewers of this submission, and reviewers through various rounds of review whose comments greatly improved the manuscript. We are grateful to Thomas Bauska for encouraging us to do better at referencing the ice core data, and John Jasper for discussion of the early days of the alkenone palaeobarometer.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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    PAPER (OA)
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