The evolution of Earth's climate on geological timescales is largely driven by variations in the magnitude of total solar irradiance (TSI) and changes in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere. ...Here we show that the slow ∼50 Wm
increase in TSI over the last ∼420 million years (an increase of ∼9 Wm
of radiative forcing) was almost completely negated by a long-term decline in atmospheric CO
. This was likely due to the silicate weathering-negative feedback and the expansion of land plants that together ensured Earth's long-term habitability. Humanity's fossil-fuel use, if unabated, risks taking us, by the middle of the twenty-first century, to values of CO
not seen since the early Eocene (50 million years ago). If CO
continues to rise further into the twenty-third century, then the associated large increase in radiative forcing, and how the Earth system would respond, would likely be without geological precedent in the last half a billion years.
Throughout Earth's history, CO
2
is thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change. Here we review and revise CO
2
reconstructions from boron isotopes in carbonates and carbon ...isotopes in organic matter over the Cenozoic-the past 66 million years. We find close coupling between CO
2
and climate throughout the Cenozoic, with peak CO
2
levels of ∼1,500 ppm in the Eocene greenhouse, decreasing to ∼500 ppm in the Miocene, and falling further into the ice age world of the Plio-Pleistocene. Around two-thirds of Cenozoic CO
2
drawdown is explained by an increase in the ratio of ocean alkalinity to dissolved inorganic carbon, likely linked to a change in the balance of weathering to outgassing, with the remaining one-third due to changing ocean temperature and major ion composition. Earth system climate sensitivity is explored and may vary between different time intervals. The Cenozoic CO
2
record highlights the truly geological scale of anthropogenic CO
2
change: Current CO
2
levels were last seen around 3 million years ago, and major cuts in emissions are required to prevent a return to the CO
2
levels of the Miocene or Eocene in the coming century.
The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (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. However, it remains controversial whether such reservoirs were indeed the source of the carbon that drove the warming. 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. We find strong evidence for a much larger (more than 10,000 petagrams)-and, on average, isotopically heavier-carbon source than considered previously. This leads us to identify volcanism associated with the North Atlantic Igneous Province, 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.
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Ocean acidification (OA) is considered an important threat to coral reef ecosystems, because it reduces the availability of carbonate ions that reef-building corals need to produce their skeletons. ...However, while theory predicts that coral calcification rates decline as carbonate ion concentrations decrease, this prediction is not consistently borne out in laboratory manipulation experiments or in studies of corals inhabiting naturally low-pH reefs today. The skeletal growth of corals consists of two distinct processes: extension (upward growth) and densification (lateral thickening). Here, we show that skeletal density is directly sensitive to changes in seawater carbonate ion concentration and thus, to OA, whereas extension is not. We present a numerical model of Porites skeletal growth that links skeletal density with the external seawater environment via its influence on the chemistry of coral calcifying fluid. We validate the model using existing coral skeletal datasets from six Porites species collected across five reef sites and use this framework to project the impact of 21st century OA on Porites skeletal density across the global tropics. Our model predicts that OA alone will drive up to 20.3 ± 5.4% decline in the skeletal density of reef-building Porites corals.
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The Early Eocene Climate Optimum (EECO, which occurred about 51 to 53 million years ago), was the warmest interval of the past 65 million years, with mean annual surface air temperature over ten ...degrees Celsius warmer than during the pre-industrial period. Subsequent global cooling in the middle and late Eocene epoch, especially at high latitudes, eventually led to continental ice sheet development in Antarctica in the early Oligocene epoch (about 33.6 million years ago). However, existing estimates place atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels during the Eocene at 500-3,000 parts per million, and in the absence of tighter constraints carbon-climate interactions over this interval remain uncertain. Here we use recent analytical and methodological developments to generate a new high-fidelity record of CO2 concentrations using the boron isotope (δ(11)B) composition of well preserved planktonic foraminifera from the Tanzania Drilling Project, revising previous estimates. Although species-level uncertainties make absolute values difficult to constrain, CO2 concentrations during the EECO were around 1,400 parts per million. The relative decline in CO2 concentration through the Eocene is more robustly constrained at about fifty per cent, with a further decline into the Oligocene. Provided the latitudinal dependency of sea surface temperature change for a given climate forcing in the Eocene was similar to that of the late Quaternary period, this CO2 decline was sufficient to drive the well documented high- and low-latitude cooling that occurred through the Eocene. Once the change in global temperature between the pre-industrial period and the Eocene caused by the action of all known slow feedbacks (apart from those associated with the carbon cycle) is removed, both the EECO and the late Eocene exhibit an equilibrium climate sensitivity relative to the pre-industrial period of 2.1 to 4.6 degrees Celsius per CO2 doubling (66 per cent confidence), which is similar to the canonical range (1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius), indicating that a large fraction of the warmth of the early Eocene greenhouse was driven by increased CO2 concentrations, and that climate sensitivity was relatively constant throughout this period.
Past climates inform our future Tierney, Jessica E; Poulsen, Christopher J; Montañez, Isabel P ...
Science,
11/2020, Volume:
370, Issue:
6517
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
As the world warms, there is a profound need to improve projections of climate change. Although the latest Earth system models offer an unprecedented number of features, fundamental uncertainties ...continue to cloud our view of the future. Past climates provide the only opportunity to observe how the Earth system responds to high carbon dioxide, underlining a fundamental role for paleoclimatology in constraining future climate change. Here, we review the relevancy of paleoclimate information for climate prediction and discuss the prospects for emerging methodologies to further insights gained from past climates. Advances in proxy methods and interpretations pave the way for the use of past climates for model evaluation-a practice that we argue should be widely adopted.
Abstract
The Piacenzian stage of the Pliocene (2.6 to 3.6 Ma) is the most recent past interval of sustained global warmth with mean global temperatures markedly higher (by ~2–3 °C) than today. ...Quantifying CO
2
levels during the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (mPWP) provides a means, therefore, to deepen our understanding of Earth System behaviour in a warm climate state. Here we present a new high-resolution record of atmospheric CO
2
using the δ
11
B-pH proxy from 3.35 to 3.15 million years ago (Ma) at a temporal resolution of 1 sample per 3–6 thousand years (kyrs). Our study interval covers both the coolest marine isotope stage of the mPWP, M2 (~3.3 Ma) and the transition into its warmest phase including interglacial KM5c (centered on ~3.205 Ma) which has a similar orbital configuration to present. We find that CO
2
ranged from
$${{\bf{394}}}_{{\boldsymbol{-}}{\bf{9}}}^{{\boldsymbol{+}}{\bf{34}}}$$
394
−
9
+
34
ppm to
$${{\bf{330}}}_{{\boldsymbol{-}}{\bf{21}}}^{{\boldsymbol{+}}{\bf{14}}}$$
330
−
21
+
14
ppm: with CO
2
during the KM5c interglacial being
$${{\bf{391}}}_{{\boldsymbol{-}}{\bf{28}}}^{{\boldsymbol{+}}{\bf{30}}}$$
391
−
28
+
30
ppm (at 95% confidence). Our findings corroborate the idea that changes in atmospheric CO
2
levels played a distinct role in climate variability during the mPWP. They also facilitate ongoing data-model comparisons and suggest that, at present rates of human emissions, there will be more CO
2
in Earth’s atmosphere by 2025 than at any time in at least the last 3.3 million years.
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Geological and geochemical evidence indicates that the Antarctic ice sheet formed during the Eocene-Oligocene transition, 33.5-34.0 million years ago. Modelling studies suggest that such ice-sheet ...formation might have been triggered when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels () fell below a critical threshold of ∼750 p.p.m.v., but the timing and magnitude of relative to the evolution of the ice sheet has remained unclear. Here we use the boron isotope pH proxy on exceptionally well-preserved carbonate microfossils from a recently discovered geological section in Tanzania to estimate before, during and after the climate transition. Our data suggest that a reduction in occurred before the main phase of ice growth, followed by a sharp recovery to pre-transition values and then a more gradual decline. During maximum ice-sheet growth, was between ∼450 and ∼1,500 p.p.m.v., with a central estimate of ∼760 p.p.m.v. The ice cap survived the period of recovery, although possibly with some reduction in its volume, implying (as models predict) a nonlinear response to climate forcing during melting. Overall, our results confirm the central role of declining in the development of the Antarctic ice sheet (in broad agreement with carbon cycle modelling) and help to constrain mechanisms and feedbacks associated with the Earth's biggest climate switch of the past 65 Myr.
On 10 ³- to 10 ⁶-year timescales, global sea level is determined largely by the volume of ice stored on land, which in turn largely reflects the thermal state of the Earth system. Here we use ...observations from five well-studied time slices covering the last 40 My to identify a well-defined and clearly sigmoidal relationship between atmospheric CO ₂ and sea level on geological (near-equilibrium) timescales. This strongly supports the dominant role of CO ₂ in determining Earth’s climate on these timescales and suggests that other variables that influence long-term global climate (e.g., topography, ocean circulation) play a secondary role. The relationship between CO ₂ and sea level we describe portrays the “likely” (68% probability) long-term sea-level response after Earth system adjustment over many centuries. Because it appears largely independent of other boundary condition changes, it also may provide useful long-range predictions of future sea level. For instance, with CO ₂ stabilized at 400–450 ppm (as required for the frequently quoted “acceptable warming” of 2 °C), or even at AD 2011 levels of 392 ppm, we infer a likely (68% confidence) long-term sea-level rise of more than 9 m above the present. Therefore, our results imply that to avoid significantly elevated sea level in the long term, atmospheric CO ₂ should be reduced to levels similar to those of preindustrial times.
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'...there are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There ...are things we don't know we don't know.' Donald Rumsfeld 12th February 2002.
This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Hyperthermals: rapid and extreme global warming in our geological past'.
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