From Newcastle University
Global cooling as significant as global warming
A “cold snap” 116 million years ago triggered a similar marine ecosystem crisis to those witnessed in the past as a result of global warming, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience.
The international study involving experts from the universities of Newcastle, UK, Cologne, Frankfurt and GEOMAR-Kiel, confirms the link between global cooling and a crash in the marine ecosystem during the mid-Cretaceous greenhouse period.
It also quantifies for the first time the amplitude and duration of the temperature change. Analysing the geochemistry and micropaleontology of a marine sediment core taken from the North Atlantic Ocean, the team show that a global temperature drop of up to 5oC resulted in a major shift in the global carbon cycle over a period of 2.5 million years.
Occurring during a time of high tectonic activity that drove the breaking up of the super-continent Pangaea, the research explains how the opening and widening of new ocean basins around Africa, South America and Europe created additional space where large amounts of atmospheric CO2 was fixed by photosynthetic organisms like marine algae. The dead organisms were then buried in the sediments on the sea bed, producing organic, carbon rich shale in these new basins, locking away the carbon that was previously in the atmosphere.
The result of this massive carbon fixing mechanism was a drop in the levels of atmospheric CO2, reducing the greenhouse effect and lowering global temperature.
This period of global cooling came to an end after about 2 million years following the onset of a period of intense local volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean. Producing huge volumes of volcanic gas, carbon that had been removed from the atmosphere when it was locked away in the shale was replaced with CO2 from the Earth’s interior, re-instating a greenhouse effect which led to warmer climate and an end to the “cold snap”.
The research team say this study highlights how global climate is intrinsically linked to processes taking place in the earth’s interior at million year time scales and that these processes can modify ecospace for marine life, driving evolution.
Current research efforts tend to concentrate on global warming and the impact that a rise of a few degrees might have on past and present day ecosystems. This study shows that if global temperatures swing the other way by a similar amount, the result can be just as severe, at least for marine life.
However, the research team emphasise that the observed changes of the earth system in the Cretaceous happened over millions of years, rather than decades or centennial, which cannot easily be related to our rapidly changing modern climate conditions.
“As always it’s a question of fine balance and scale,” explains Thomas Wagner, Professor of Earth Systems Science at Newcastle University, and one of the leaders of this study.
“All earth system processes are operating all the time and at different temporal and spatial scales; but when something upsets the balance – be it a large scale but long term natural phenomenon or a short and massive change to global greenhouse gases due to anthropogenic activity – there are multiple, potential knock-on effects on the whole system.
“The trick is to identify and quantify the initial drivers and consequences, which remains an ongoing challenge in climate research.”
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Lucky he got that second-last paragraph in — his funding was teetering in the balance for a moment there..
‘The result of this massive carbon fixing mechanism was a drop in the levels of atmospheric CO2, reducing the greenhouse effect and lowering global temperature.’
Cause or effect?
The result of this massive carbon fixing mechanism was a drop in the levels of atmospheric CO2, reducing the greenhouse effect and lowering global temperature.
Why do these academics continue to claim carbon dioxide must be the cause of every global temperature change? The level of carbon dioxide changes after the change in temperature. The effect of carbon dioxide is logarithmic in any case so large reductions from 1200 to 600ppm would only have the same effect as 600 to 300ppm.
Walking back out of this ‘carbon fixation’ is going to be very difficult for academia.
Wouldn’t it have been the case that the cooling temperatures then increased oceanic uptake of CO2?
They mention increased tectonic activity and we know that that causes cooling by injectiin material into the stratosphere.
Additional sea areas around the equatorial regions as part of Pangea drifted polewards would be enough to energise the biosphere despite any general cooling process in the background.
Add increased ocean absorption to a larger equatorial biosphere and that would deplete atmospheric CO2.
The conclusion that less CO2 caused the cooling is not warranted.
As for the recovery 2 million years later it is hard to see how intense volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean would cause such warming when we all see that volcanos cause cooling.
This “study” is so bad, that it can’t even be called pseudoscience. It is carboncentric anti-science.
“Marine Ecosystem” = ocean? All climate in terms of “carbon”? They have all the right jargon and climate correct wording without quantifying the CO2 losses and gains. As mentioned above, volcanic activity warms when convenient as it cools when convenient. Is recent volcanic activity the cause for this period of global warming then? Sounds like an interesting study of the formation of African shales if they had stuck to the facts and not tried all the AGW buzz words.
Another result from models. Relying on the GHE, when it blatently does not work as advertised, ignores the obvious vast amounts of SO2 aerosols that would cool the earth. During such a time there would also be a vast amount of CO2 injected which they ignore only that some could be sequestered thus reducing temperatures.
The same Indian Ocean/Pacific Ocean volcanism is shown to have caused, in a separate paper, global warming.
Why do these academics continue to claim carbon dioxide must be the cause of every global temperature change?
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
“these processes can modify ecospace for marine life, driving evolution.”
Boy, they are even trying out a new buzzword. While I agree that tectonics have a wide influence….wait a minute, this is just a buzzwording of a well-known effect, I’m afraid. Nice try, kids.
“our rapidly changing modern climate conditions”
Where on EARTH do we see ‘rapidly changing climate conditions”?
” the research explains how the opening and widening of new ocean basins around Africa, South America and Europe created additional space where large amounts of atmospheric CO2 was fixed by photosynthetic organisms like marine algae.”
Am I missing something, or didn’t the breakup of Pangaea just result in several ocean basins of about the same area as the single ocean that existed previously?
This blurb on the new paper can give the impression Pangaea broke up around 116 MYA in a single event and that is very far from the truth. I don’t know if the actual paper is also misleading but for clarification here is a summary of the action:
There were three major phases in the break-up of Pangaea. The first phase began in the Early-Middle Jurassic (about 175 Ma), when Pangaea began to rift from the Tethys Ocean in the east to the Pacific in the west, ultimately giving rise to the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana. The rifting that took place between North America and Africa produced multiple failed rifts. One rift resulted in a new ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean.[14]
The Atlantic Ocean did not open uniformly; rifting began in the north-central Atlantic. The South Atlantic did not open until the Cretaceous when Laurasia started to rotate clockwise and moved northward with North America to the north, and Eurasia to the south. The clockwise motion of Laurasia led to the closing of the Tethys Ocean. Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa and along the adjacent margins of east Africa, Antarctica and Madagascar, new rifts were forming that would not only lead to the formation of the southwestern Indian Ocean but also open up in the Cretaceous.
The second major phase in the break-up of Pangaea began in the Early Cretaceous (150–140 Ma), when the minor supercontinent of Gondwana separated into multiple continents (Africa, South America, India, Antarctica, and Australia). About 200 Ma, the continent of Cimmeria, as mentioned above (see “Formation of Pangaea”), collided with Eurasia. However, a subduction zone was forming, as soon as Cimmeria collided.[14]
This subduction zone was called the Tethyan Trench. This trench might have subducted what is called the Tethyan mid-ocean ridge, a ridge responsible for the Tethys Ocean’s expansion. It probably caused Africa, India and Australia to move northward. In the Early Cretaceous, Atlantica, today’s South America and Africa, finally separated from eastern Gondwana (Antarctica, India and Australia), causing the opening of a “South Indian Ocean”. In the Middle Cretaceous, Gondwana fragmented to open up the South Atlantic Ocean as South America started to move westward away from Africa. The South Atlantic did not develop uniformly; rather, it rifted from south to north.
Also, at the same time, Madagascar and India began to separate from Antarctica and moved northward, opening up the Indian Ocean. Madagascar and India separated from each other 100–90 Ma in the Late Cretaceous. India continued to move northward toward Eurasia at 15 centimeters (6 in) a year (a plate tectonic record), closing the Tethys Ocean, while Madagascar stopped and became locked to the African Plate. New Zealand, New Caledonia and the rest of Zealandia began to separate from Australia, moving eastward toward the Pacific and opening the Coral Sea and Tasman Sea.
The third major and final phase of the break-up of Pangaea occurred in the early Cenozoic (Paleocene to Oligocene). Laurasia split when North America/Greenland (also called Laurentia) broke free from Eurasia, opening the Norwegian Sea about 60–55 Ma. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans continued to expand, closing the Tethys Ocean.
It also strikes me as strange (well not really) that CO2 gets top billing and ocean current changes / new oceans & their effect on climate don’t rate a mention.
Black Diamond or Black Swan?
If you can see that the logical extension of the UAH data series in this presentation should next contain a Black Diamond (a falling node) and can place it somewhere on the graph with good arguments then welcome to short terminal climate prediction!
http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/RichardLH/story/70051
A black swan moment?
Damn auto complete – short term climate prediction!
The greenhouse effect is well-established physics so this study naturally builds on that knowledge to investigate the effect of global cooling on marine life. The fact that the cooling is caused by changing carbon dioxide composition of the atmosphere appears to be incidental, rather than central to the study.
Interesting research.
Why is it that any reduction in mean temperatures, however large and even for millions of years is always referred to in the media as a “cold snap”, as if cooling/freezing is too trivial to be concerned with? Whereas of course any increase in temperatures is proof positive of warming models veracity. Funny thing, that.
This did not happen.
I’m running the highest resolution temperature database of anyone (equivalent to 0.5 million year smoothing) and I have all the CO2 estimates produced from reliable methods.
Here is Temp versus CO2 from 170 million years ago to 100 million years ago. Nothing happened at 116 Mya and CO2 was consistently between 700 ppm to 3,000 ppm over this period.
I picked the time-frame just to highlight something which is rarely mentioned. There was a significant ice age at 160 Mya when East Asia drifted across the North Pole. The dinosaurs actually lived in a period when large glaciers existed at the North Pole – where Siberia was at the time.
http://s7.postimg.org/h3nvbh5cb/Temp_CO2_160_100_Mya.png
http://www2.nau.edu/rcb7/160_1st.jpg
Now what was happening at 116 Mya was that South America and Africa had just started breaking apart (from the south up to the north) (South America splitting with Antarctica and Australia in tow) and 116 Mya seems to be the most rapid period of this unzipping. So, I’m assuming, large volcanic activity has distorted whatever data the authors were using.
http://s23.postimg.org/qgci3rx8r/South_Pole_116_Mya.png
PowerPoint animation of Gondwana breaking up – big file but will be very interesting for those into plate tectonics.
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/plates/movies/akog.ppt
“This study shows….”
‘Suggests’ used to be the operative word in such studies. We have seen so much certainty in climate science, the same kind of confident phraseology used in studies that are now known to be balderdash. I’ll bet you this is the result of the Schneider admonition that climate scientists should not indicate any uncertainties. Indeed, the plethora of this type of semantics suggests that it was promulgated as a policy, probably arising from the advice of the slick communications consultants that were hired to help these poor honest scientists to compete for the hearts and minds with the big bad oiled and coaled skeptics (who, ironically use homely things like “bullshit button” and other such no-nonsense terms).
A problem with fonts and rendering:
The way my browser rendered the above sentence, it came out looking like “fifty Centigrade”. It should, of course, read “five degrees Centigrade”.
Icarus62 says:
June 17, 2013 at 5:21 am
Into the Koolaid kind of early, aren’t you? Always fun when a True Believer describes the earths’ complex, multi-cyclic climate system as “simple physics”.
Submarine Volcanic activity…………………
“Locked away in the shale” and then…………..”was replaced with CO2 from the Earth’s interior,”
Cripes, sedimentary carboniferous, cretaceous deposits, ie the stuff wot locks away CO2 – is usually via fossilisation of plant life or, fossilisation of billions of calciferous shells of marine fauna and laid down over millennia in suitable marine environments, locked away it certainly is – till we dig, mine, drill it – bring it back to the surface and burn it, pulverise it and use it to build with.
“was replaced with CO2 from the Earth’s interior, re-instating a greenhouse effect which led to warmer climate”.
Yet there was no great coral mass extinction, no massive ocean acidification, with all that increase in C02.
“A “cold snap” 116 million years ago triggered a similar marine ecosystem crisis…”
Oh dear, if only humans had been around to pass a Climate Change tax.
Where’s my red BS button. I’m on my 10th one too. The last 9 wore out!
Pure conjecture, most people do not know, YET, that the volcanic erruptions of El Chichon and Pinatubo caused long term warming by altering the water vapor content of the stratosphere hence altering the amount of shortwave IR that the surface receives after the Sulfuric Acid clouds and short term cooling effects dissipated. How could the authors be so sure that similar conditions did not cause the warming millions of years ago. Peer reviewed literature indicates that at least 30% of the warming over the last two decades were caused by just two Volcanic erruptions. CO2 again is likely an effect not a cause.
Oh good, someone else pointed out the ridiculousness which a 50 Kelvin temperature swing would involve.