From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , another “carbon as planet killer” scenario.
MIT researchers find that the end-Permian extinction happened in 60,000 years — much faster than earlier estimates
The largest mass extinction in the history of animal life occurred some 252 million years ago, wiping out more than 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of life on land — including the largest insects known to have inhabited the Earth. Multiple theories have aimed to explain the cause of what’s now known as the end-Permian extinction, including an asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruptions, or a cataclysmic cascade of environmental events. But pinpointing the cause of the extinction requires better measurements of how long the extinction period lasted.
Now researchers at MIT have determined that the end-Permian extinction occurred over 60,000 years, give or take 48,000 years — practically instantaneous, from a geologic perspective. The new timescale is based on more precise dating techniques, and indicates that the most severe extinction in history may have happened more than 10 times faster than scientists had previously thought.
“We’ve got the extinction nailed in absolute time and duration,” says Sam Bowring, the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT. “How do you kill 96 percent of everything that lived in the oceans in tens of thousands of years? It could be that an exceptional extinction requires an exceptional explanation.”
In addition to establishing the extinction’s duration, Bowring, graduate student Seth Burgess, and a colleague from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology also found that, 10,000 years before the die-off, the oceans experienced a pulse of light carbon, which likely reflects a massive addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This dramatic change may have led to widespread ocean acidification and increased sea temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius or more, killing the majority of sea life.
But what originally triggered the spike in carbon dioxide? The leading theory among geologists and paleontologists has to do with widespread, long-lasting volcanic eruptions from the Siberian Traps, a region of Russia whose steplike hills are a result of repeated eruptions of magma. To determine whether eruptions from the Siberian Traps triggered a massive increase in oceanic carbon dioxide, Burgess and Bowring are using similar dating techniques to establish a timescale for the Permian period’s volcanic eruptions that are estimated to have covered over five million cubic kilometers.
“It is clear that whatever triggered extinction must have acted very quickly,” says Burgess, the lead author of a paper that reports the results in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “fast enough to destabilize the biosphere before the majority of plant and animal life had time to adapt in an effort to survive.”
Pinning dates on an extinction
In 2006, Bowring and his students made a trip to Meishan, China, a region whose rock formations bear evidence of the end-Permian extinction; geochronologists and paleontologists have flocked to the area to look for clues in its layers of sedimentary rock. In particular, scientists have focused on a section of rock that is thought to delineate the end of the Permian, and the beginning of the Triassic, based on evidence such as the number of fossils found in surrounding rock layers.
Bowring sampled rocks from this area, as well as from nearby alternating layers of volcanic ash beds and fossil-bearing rocks. After analyzing the rocks in the lab, his team reported in 2011 that the end-Permian likely lasted less than 200,000 years. However, this timeframe still wasn’t precise enough to draw any conclusions about what caused the extinction.
Now, the team has revised its estimates using more accurate dating techniques based on a better understanding of uncertainties in timescale measurements.
With this knowledge, Bowring and his colleagues reanalyzed rock samples collected from five volcanic ash beds at the Permian-Triassic boundary. The researchers pulverized rocks and separated out tiny zircon crystals containing a mix of uranium and lead. They then isolated uranium from lead, and measured the ratios of both isotopes to determine the age of each rock sample.
From their measurements, the researchers determined a much more precise “age model” for the end-Permian extinction, which now appears to have lasted about 60,000 years — with an uncertainty of 48,000 years — and was immediately preceded by a sharp increase in carbon dioxide in the oceans.
‘Spiraling toward the truth’
The new timeline adds weight to the theory that the extinction was triggered by massive volcanic eruptions from the Siberian Traps that released volatile chemicals, including carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere and oceans. With such a short extinction timeline, Bowring says it is possible that a single, catastrophic pulse of magmatic activity triggered an almost instantaneous collapse of all global ecosystems.
To confirm whether the Siberian Traps are indeed the extinction’s smoking gun, Burgess and Bowring plan to determine an equally precise timeline for the Siberian Traps eruptions, and will compare it to the new extinction timeline to see where the two events overlap. The researchers will investigate additional areas in China to see if the duration of the extinction can be even more precisely determined.
“We’ve refined our approach, and now we have higher accuracy and precision,” Bowring says. “You can think of it as slowly spiraling in toward the truth.”
Wake me when the extinction time gets down to 6,000 years; well make that 600 years.
mkelly:
“You and JPS argue over acids which were not mentioned in the post”
Your first post on this thread begins,
“Addition of CO₂
“The addition (or removal) of CO₂ to a solution does not change the alkalinity.”
I won’t speak for urederra, whose response was sound. I responded to your post because I thought you might wish to know this is incorrect, before the next time you tell a “chicken little” that adding CO2 to the ocean does not change its alkalinity at all. If you’re now objecting that this is off the topic of CO2 causing extinctions: yes, it is.
Don’t forget Henrik Svensmark’s take on the event, attributing it to a shortage of nearby supernovas. See the section “The great dying at the end of the Permian” in
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/a-stellar-revision-of-the-story-of-life/
My, my, my. Marine life
Anthony was kind enough to publish my article on 06 March 2012 on this subject.
I went to the link provided (above), and looked at the abstract. What is amazing is that they STILL missed the end-Permian extinction by more than 20,000 years:
Formally accepted boundary for the Permian: 252.2 ma, plus or minus 0.2 ma
From their abstract, they state the extinction, “… occurred between 251.941 [plus or minus] 0.037 and 251.880 [plus or minus] 0.031 Mya, … “.
I am appalled at the quality of research these days. The terminal Permian extinction was concluded, according to the current research, yet these “researchers” think that once the Permian was concluded, we were still in the “Permian”.
And, of course, carbon dioxide was the **only** culprit.
Dr. Paul R. Janke put together a compelling argument for an impact, and my discussion (WUWT) expanded it. The only aspect unaccounted for is an iridium-rich layer, similar to the K-T boundary, as I discussed.
We should also refer to Anthony’s chart which showed that a prolonged extinction event was underway in the 5 – 10 million years preceding the terminal event. Maybe Anthony or the mods can append that chart for us.
Thanks,
Mark H.
Interesting…. CO2 levels during the Permian era (200Myr ago) was thought to have been around 3000ppm. 500 million yrs ago CO2 was thought to have been up around 5000ppm yet life flourished. What gives? http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/co2_fairytales_in_global_warmi.html
Stupid tablet..My, my, my. Marine life must have been so prolific that one could literally walk across the oceans on the backs of all those creatures! Talk about over crowding and stressed rescources. Funny how enviromentalists (some) would love for a mass human extinction to take place, but these past natural extinctions are their worst nightmare.
The “reason” for the Ir-enriched layer with the 64 MYA collision-extinction theory is that asteroids are Ir-rich compared to the usual earth-sourced rock.
But, why would this particular 251.9 MYA collision (if it occurred) have to be a Ir-enriched asteroid? The multiple-comet-fragment collision we just saw into Jupiter only a few years ago had earth-sized cloud residues in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But no Ir spectra was reported.
The Tunguska non-surface explosion in only 100 years ago left no reported Ir spectra or “dust”. Might be there, but has not been looked for or measured – but I have read no papers even hinting at Ir residue in Siberia.
The 64 MYA event was characterized by a very thick layer – in some photos it looks deeper than 1-3 cm. Is any layer that thick – certainly it would fall in more than just 1 year! – found near in time to the 251.9 MYA collision?
In central North America the Permian section begins as nice fossilliferous marine limestones. These limestones are overlain by massive evaporite sections of salt, gypsum, and anhydrite with interbedded oxidized shales and paleosols. These same Permian evaporite basins exist all over the world, contain few fossils as you’d expect, and represent far more than 40,000 years. These evaporite basins were likely created by the formation of Pangea and coincide with a mid-Permian extinction which thereafter background extinction rates never fell until after the big end-Permian extinction. It was clearly not a single catastrophic event, but rather a long term decline of conditions on Earth started by the direct destruction of much of the world’s shallow marine environments.
As for ocean acidification from CO2 being a main cause, the extinction of 99% of radiolarians (which build Si02 shells) refutes this hypothesis considering several taxa of CaCO3 shell organisms didn’t undergo the same reduction in diversity. Ocean anoxia and euxinia, which there is evidence for, are the best explanations in my opinion.
These guys are incapable to do simple back-of-the-envelope calculations. CO2 is relatively insoluble in basaltic melts and the mantle is undersaturated with respect to CO2. Therefore a reasonable upper bound to flood basalt CO2 content is 0.5 wt.%.
Assuming a 80% degassing efficiency, 1000 cubic km of erupted magma would increase atmospheric CO2 level by 1.4 ppmv. Their number, 5 million cubic km for the original volume of the Siberian traps is at the very high end, estimates usually range from 1 to 4 million cubic km. However, it took about a million years for eruptions in that regions to accomplish that. Atmospheric CO2 was around 2000 ppmv during the Jurassic period, when Earth teamed with life, so it is not that dangerous.
Therefore, if the end-Permian extinction really happened because of CO2 and in 60,000 years as they claim, CO2 levels should have climbed much higher in that timeframe, but that could not be, because it would have required most of the eruption to happen almost instantaneously, but even their full 5 million cubic km could have produced only 3600 ppmv, if half of that would not have been sucked up by the oceans fast. What is more, weathering of newly formed basaltic plateaus starts immediately, which uses aerial CO2 in great quantities.
On the positive side, this time we do not have to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, just two.
1. Siberian traps eruptions happened a hundred times faster than usually claimed
2. CO2 levels, which supported abundant life later on, exterminated almost everything
“Carbon Dioxide equals Plant Food”
I have long been fascinated by Snow Ball Earth. Lots of evidence to support that such an event happened. So that caused the Earth to thaw after glaciation all the way down to the tropics (some say all the way to the equator). CO2, CO2 in massive amounts, amounts unseen at any other time due to volcanism and the fact that the oceans were covered in ice and unable to absorb atmospheric CO2. So if massive CO2 caused a mass extinction 250 my ago why did not the even more massive amounts of CO2 do the same 400 my ago? In fact the exact opposite happened, life exploded after the Earth warmed and the glaciers melted. Even thou massive amounts of CO2 were in the oceans and atmosphere. Something does not compute. As many have suggested I suspect the more toxic volcanic gasses were to blame.
The ice core record shows first the temp goes up, then the CO2 goes up. Since we know increased CO2 causes increased temps, the only conclusion is the effects of the increased CO2 can go backwards in time. How else do we explain CO2 going up but no increase in the average global surface temperature for nearly two decades? Obviously, the greenhouse effect can move forwards and backwards in time. There is no other explanation.
It happened on the last episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, so we know it could be happening now.
~more soylent green!
The date of the Permian extinction used to be put at about 249 – 250 mya which coincided with the start of the Siberian traps volcanoes, now it has been determined to be at 252 mya which was several million years before the traps volcanoes.
Secondly this is a period of geologic time in which CO2 was the lowest in geologic history (well of the last 600 million years). The lack of CO2 mean that plant photosynthesis could not maintain the O2 levels in the water and atmosphere causing O2 to drop from 35% down to 15% at the time of the extinctions and further drop to 12 % before recovering during the Triassic.
The lack of Oxygen in the water allowed sulfur bacteria to grow and make significant area of ocean anoxic through production of H2S. This was what caused the mass extinction in my view. The decomposition of dead organisms coupled with substantially reduced photosynthesis caused the CO2 to rise to a peak at the time of the extinction and before the Traps volcanoes started. It was this temporary peak that brought the extinctions to a halt and allowed for a little rebound in O2 levels.
The extinction was also preceded by an ice age which helped to lower CO2 levels. When the ice age ended warmer conditions perhaps accelerated the removal of O2 leading to the extinctions.
Re effect of ice age on CO2 – preindustrial levels of CO2 are put at around 270 ppm. This level is also consistent with Vostok ice core data for interglacial periods but the general ice age levels are 100ppm below this. At 180 ppm plant struggle to survive as it is very close to the 150 ppm plant death zone.
To summarise:
* Unless their is a substantial injection of CO2 its removal from the biosphere continues as it did from the Cambrian to the Permian. (mainly from limestone formation and fossil deposition.
* When CO2 drops below 300 ppm plants cannot maintain the O2 levels in the atmosphere.
* Oxygen levels drop and growth of anaerobes increases.
* Oceans become anoxic and toxic to life
* Mass extinctions occur
* decomposition exceeds photosynthesis – CO2 rises again
* new input of CO2 eg Siberian Traps volcanoes reinvigorates plant growth and life continues.
.
Therefore the cause of the extinctions was the lack of CO2, the spike stopped the extinctions
“We’ve got the extinction nailed in absolute time and duration,” says Sam Bowring
Do What ???
Since when has CO² been a chemically volitile gas.? What exactly does it bind with easily? Another pair of clowns on holiday with the taxpayer’s credit card.
Which came first the extinction or the CO2? Logic …
To mike fowle:
You note that this paper reads like a candidate for a dramatic
Hollywood script. Well, maybe. On the geologic time-scale,
a 60000 year interval is very short. On the human time scale,
you would still have an awful lot of time to fill in.
But the transition from the Permian era to the Triassic has long
been known as a period of (geologically speaking) fast, dramatic
events. Some have referred to the mass extinction as “the Great
Dying”, as it’s the largest known mass extinction event. (See the
post by Gilbert K. Arnold above for a list.) Also,
a lot of mountain-building events happened about this same time.
I particularly recall a popular-press paleontology book published
in 1938. It had the analogy of a “geologic time clock” which would
peal to mark the change between eras. For this transition, it
included the rather droll statement that “…As the geologic time
clock began to sound again, its peals went unheard, for they were
drowned in the thunderous roar of moving mountains.”
The evidence suggests that a sharp atmospheric spike in CO2 would stimulate all life rather than extinct it.
The Greenhouse Gas “paradigm shift” requires the revision of history to fit the “paradigm.”
It does come out rather badly for anyone who got a degree in the earth sciences before the “structured revolution” in science gave scientists this powerful new tool and this “new language,” and this new “lens” with which to understand natural phenomena. Structured “revolutions” in science do come as a surprise to those who were not invited to the meeting where it was decided by a “community of experts” what questions will be asked and what measurements will be taken and how the data will be interpreted.
Although I was not invited to the structured “revolution” either, I think the “community of researchers” will find the co2 and methane of past epochs triggered “tipping points” in earth’s ecosystems faster than life could adapt and evolve to conditions.
Judging from the comments the new greenhouse gas “paradigm” is “incommensurable” with what the text books once said. It is a little startling to receive the memo that the “rabbit” was really a “duck” at first, but the “researchers” found this “paradigm shift” necessary to answer their “questions.”
This is how progressive scientists roll. And this will mean of course a few modifications in behavior and education, now that these “tipping points” are being “discovered” with such great “accuracy” and “precision.”
A couple links with illustrations comparing climate shifts (greenhouse earth, hothouse earth and icehouse earth) with massive volcanic eruptions (Large Igneous Province – LIP) creation, and extinction events for your consideration. I am starting to wonder if life on this planet is well adapted to volcanic activity, as it has been continuous since the planet cooled. Volcanic activity (among other things) stresses the life but it takes another large push – impact, close supernovae, methane bloom, etc. to trigger an extinction event. Cheers –
http://www.princeton.edu/geosciences/people/keller/pdf/K_24.pdf
http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/13aug
Clarification: continuous in that volcanic activity is always present, though the rate of emission vastly waxes and wanes over time. Cheers –
Tom G(ologist) says:
February 11, 2014 at 5:38 am
Hey David L;
“In my day it was “Star Wars Defense” and much funding could be gotten for anything you could do with a laser, even if it had nothing to do with defense.”
Don’t knock it. At least we got CD and DVD players – and those little cat amusing laser pointers 😉
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
More important the research was not used to justify shutting down Western Civilization.
So the Siberian Traps volcanic explosions only released co2? They released a whole lot of noxious gases and probably blotted out the sun.
Around 252 million years ago CO2 levels were roughly between 1700-1800 ppm. There were periods for many millions of years with much higher CO2 levels with no mass extinctions. There is no scientific evidence that CO2 caused any mass extinction known unless the spike would have been above 50,000 ppm.
Sounds like desperation to me….CO2 is the enemy. There has been some gentle warming at the end of the last century that has flattened off but the scare stories come from biased climate models. No overall warming since the Climatic Optimum so cooling 10,000 years. NASA and the Solar Physicists predicting global cooling so the outlook is bleak for the planet and the AGW’s.
To keep the grants coming in they have to blame the planets number one plant food for something.
If the Solar Physicists are right about an approaching Mini Ice Age we will need all the cO2 we can muster….