UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
CREDIT: DR TOM GERNON/UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON [@TMGERNON]
Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that two intense periods of volcanism triggered a period of global cooling and falling oxygen levels in the oceans, which caused one of the most severe mass extinctions in Earth history.
The researchers, working with colleagues at the University of Oldenburg, the University of Leeds and the University of Plymouth, studied the effects of volcanic ash and lava on ocean chemistry during a period of extreme environmental change around 450 million years ago. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
This period brought about intense planetary cooling, which culminated in a glaciation and the major ‘Late Ordovician Mass Extinction’. This extinction led to the loss of about 85% of species dwelling in the oceans, reshaping the course of evolution of life on Earth.
“It’s been suggested that global cooling was driven by an increase in phosphorus input to the oceans” says Dr Jack Longman, lead author of the study based at the University of Oldenburg, and previously a postdoctoral researcher at Southampton. “Phosphorus is one of the key elements of life, determining the pace at which tiny aquatic organisms like algae can use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into organic matter”. These organisms eventually settle to the seabed and are buried, ultimately reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.
“The unresolved puzzle is why glaciation and extinction occurred in two distinct phases at this time, separated by about 10 million years”, states Dr Tom Gernon, Associate Professor at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study. “That requires some mechanism to pulse the supply of phosphorus, which is hard to explain”.
The team identified that two exceptionally large pulses of volcanic activity across the globe, occurring in parts of present-day North America and South China, coincided very closely with the two peaks in glaciation and extinction. “But intense bursts of volcanism are more typically linked to massive CO2 release, which should drive global warming, so another process must be responsible for sudden cooling events”, explains Dr Gernon.
This prompted the team to consider whether a secondary process—natural breakdown or ‘weathering’ of the volcanic material—may have provided the surge in phosphorus need to explain the glaciations.
“When volcanic material is deposited in the oceans it undergoes rapid and profound chemical alteration, including release of phosphorus, effectively fertilizing the oceans,” states co-author Professor Martin Palmer from the University of Southampton. “So, it is seemed viable hypothesis and certainly one worth testing”.
“This led our team to study volcanic ash layers in much younger marine sediments to compare their phosphorus contents before and after they were modified by interactions with seawater” said Dr Hayley Manners, a lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Plymouth. Equipped with this information, the team were better placed to understand the potential geochemical impact of extensive volcanic layers from enormous eruptions during the Ordovician.
“This prompted us to develop a global biogeochemical model to understand the knock-on effects on the carbon cycle of rapidly adding a surge of phosphorus leached from volcanic deposits into the ocean”, says Dr Benjamin Mills, Associate Professor at the University of Leeds and co-author on the study.
The team discovered that widespread blankets of volcanic material laid down on the seafloor during the Ordovician Period would have released sufficient phosphorus into the ocean to drive a chain of events, including climatic cooling, glaciation, widespread reduction in ocean oxygen levels, and mass extinction.
Whilst it might be tempting to think that seeding the oceans with phosphorus may help solve the current climate crisis, the scientists caution that this may have more damaging consequences. “Excess nutrient runoff from sources like agricultural fertilisers is a major cause of marine eutrophication – where algae grow rapidly and then decay, consuming oxygen and causing substantial damage to ecosystems at the present day”, cautions Dr Mills.
The scientists conclude that whilst on short timescales massive volcanic eruptions can warm the climate via CO2 emissions, equally they can drive global cooling on multimillion-year timescales. “Our study may prompt reinvestigations of other mass extinctions during Earth history”, concludes Dr Longman.
JOURNAL
Nature Geoscience
DOI
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Computational simulation/modeling
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Late Ordovician climate change and extinctions driven by elevated volcanic nutrient supply
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
2-Dec-2021
“These organisms eventually settle to the seabed and are buried, ultimately reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.”
Hmmm. skip to end…
“The scientists conclude that whilst on short timescales massive volcanic eruptions can warm the climate via CO2 emissions, equally they can drive global cooling on multimillion-year timescales.”
Give up.
I agree Pablo.
There is no evidence that CO2 causes the climate to change other than a fake mathematical model that has an artificially weak global solar illumination power input.
Yes, but also it is claimed, from some fact based in evidence, that aerosols do cause dimming and cooling.
The fact in evidence contemplated to be volcanic activity.
Now, the aerosol dimming-cooling, while lately it may be much needed to be played and utilized as an explaining reason for cooling and dimming in a certain anthropogenic warming period, it needs also a boosting and a correcting patch of the evidence that suggests the aerosols effect.
Whatever we may think about aerosol effect on climate, when it comes to warming, paleoclimate data that are there suggest clearly and uphold a considerable temporary correlation of natural strong climatic warming signal with global strong increased volcanic activity, where no any supposed dimming effect or climatic cooling effect
considered… as it being non existing.
Natural warming, as far as paleoclimate data shows, can not and is not stopped or blocked from aerosols dimming.
So going in a goose chase,100 of million years in the past, as to enforce that increased volcanic activity causes cooling and therefore patching the problem of the aerosols dimming effect on climate… to me is simply silly.
No wondering that many do think, wrongly, that aerosol dimming effect is considerable and potent versus climate, as already wrongly accepting that volcanic activity impacts climate against warming and forces it towards cooling…. something not really supported from paleoclimate data.
There is no evidence that aerosols or volcanic activity causes the climate to change other than evidence of people like Tony Blair believing it and proclaiming it publicly as a fact… when mislead and brainwashed by climateriat mavericks.
Going 450 million years back to the future, in a silly goose chase, does not make it any better.
Sorry if I may have overstepped a little here.
cheers
But do you really believe there IS global warming going on? I might agre to regional warming, (Arctic) , but the Southern Hemisphere , as far as we can measure seems to be cooling……and therein lies the problem. With only a quarter of the plangent being measured with questionable honesty , I contend there is NO global average temperature we can scientifically claim as accurate
The world has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age. That is not in doubt. That warm up started long before CO2 could have possibly played a role. Whether temperatures at present have plateaued or paused, only time will tell.
A very tricky question… Doug. 🙂
Is like asking if LIA was a global glacial period…
And these things when viewed by the point of the evidence, do not consist as beliefs… either they are or not.
The only thing important is the precision of specification.
cheers
The prompt effect of large eruptions is cooling.
Willis has a great game called Spot The Volcano.
So far… no winners.
I was surprised that it didn’t say From YouReekAlot! at the end.
The real purpose of this “research” (or more accurately, development of doctrine), is to obscure the fact that there was a glaciation despite 10x higher CO2 than we have today.
Pablo, you need remember that on planet climate scientist, any warming causes catastrophe and any cooling also causes catastrophe.
And then there are EXTREME NORMALS!!!
Alarum! Alarum! Everybody run in circles, scream and shout. Oh woe! Oh despair!
(Oops. Sprained an eyeball rolling them while typing that.)
“reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.”
Oh dear. Doubtless, their model confirms that?
Reduce the CO2 below 200 ppm and the death happens anyway.
I stopped reading after the global biogeochemical model was announced.
“The late Ordovician glaciation was preceded by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 7,000 ppm to 4,400 ppm).” This from Wikipedia but I have no reason to argue.
How did it manage to cool with that much CO2?
Makes our modern 400 ppm seem rather inconsequential, does it not?
Right, that was my point as well. As far as I can tell, the idea is to yell “Look, squirrel!”, and bark their brains out.
Oh I bet there are also Mann clones who have debunked the paleoclimate data. Maybe they now want us to believe that CO2 dropped from 7000ppm to 200ppm, or that it was never 7000ppm, only 500ppm which we’re “dangerously close” to reaching.
When you no longer depend on facts and data, the opportunities for creativity certainly increase.
Let’s stipulate that 280ppm is the pre-industrial perfect level of CO2, go with a nominal 3K/2xCO2 ECS value, and take 12.7C as the global average temperature in 1850.
In that case, 7000ppm was about 4.6 doublings from 280ppm and should have been 13.7K warmer than 1850. That would be about 12.7+13.7=26.4C global average.
Dropping down to 4000ppm from 7000ppm, that’s 75% of a halving, so 2.3K of cooling is predicted for an ECS of 3.
It should have dropped from 26.4C to 24.1C (still 7.4 degrees hotter than the pre-industrial period). Instead it went into an ice age.
So obviously something doesn’t add up. Time for some Climastrological miracles.
It is the rapid change in CO2 level, independent of what the level is, analogous to a rapid change in blood pressure, that causes the “climate malfunction”?
The thing is, given the resolution of prehistoric data I don’t see any way of judging if todays rate of change is any different from past changes
I guess I should have used a sarcasm tag
No matter, I wanted to make that point anyway. Yo simply gave me an opportunity,
Thank you for pointing that out, as the alarmist article announcing the research paper conveniently left out any useful numbers that would spoil the political effect.
Wow! Glaciation – extinction level glaciation – occurred even with 10x the CO2 in the air!
There used to be a clear differentiation between science fiction and science (fact).
In these modern times that distinction has clearly been lost.
I wonder where the libraries place these novel, science like kind of stories?
Were I responsible for shelving them they would land in Fiction next to all the other dystopian novels….
Me, in the bin (or circular file).
I would change the second verb in the title of this post with “claim“…
Obviously they are wrong. CO2 drives the climate and nothing else has any effect. The IPCC said so, and 97% of Climate Scientologists agree!
That’s their problem. They think CO2 drives the climate, yet all these other things are intruding on, and interfering with, the CO2 -centric theory and they can’t reconcile it with the data they collected.
Trivially simple fix—correct the data! Adjust it to fit the hypothesis. There must be a bristlecone pine out there somewhere with the right data. We should really be able to just make one up since we know it has to exist. We can’t let anal-retentive data collection rules stand in the way of addressing the climate emergency!
So basically all Climate Models that use volcanic eruptions as an excuse for periods of cooling are completely wrong. OK.
Honestly, trashing these Climate Scientology papers is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s not even challenging any more.
Except the trash gets headline coverage, and shooting the fish does not…
Zig Zag: “Honestly, trashing these Climate Scientology papers is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s not even challenging any more.”
–
They pretend to produce ‘Science’. We pretend to believe them.
–
–
Oh wait… no we don’t.
😜
“These organisms eventually settle to the seabed and are buried, ultimately reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.”
We have come to expect that as new realities come to light researchers will adjust their theories to accommodate these realities. My parents and grandparents grew up in a world where the continents were pretty firmly fixed in place but by the time I was in school the fact of plate tectonics had taken over the narrative. Doctors used to believe that “bad air” caused illness and bloodletting was beneficial to sick people. Today most doctors seem to have abandoned these foolish notions.
That increases in CO2 trail warming by hundreds of years is now firmly established but there are still some slow individuals who refuse to accept this and continue to assert that increases/decreases in CO2 affect the temperature of the Earth. Mockery doesn’t seem to penetrate the determined insistence on wrong-headed thinking of these deluded creatures but we must keep the pressure on. Maybe we can’t fix stupid but we should be able to bury it in laughter.
Pamela: “Doctors used to believe that “bad air” caused illness and bloodletting was beneficial to sick people. Today most doctors seem to have abandoned these foolish notions.”
–
Oh dear…….. I’m thinking maybe I should switch to another doctor?
😜
Semeru Volcano which has a strato type with a lava dome, with the highest peak Mahameru (3676 masl) Administratively located in Malang and Lumajang regencies, East Java Province. The current activity of Mount Semeru is in Jonggring Seloko Crater, which is located southeast of the Mahameru peak which was formed in 1913. The eruptions of Mount Semeru are generally of volcanic and strombolian type, in the form of destruction of the lava dome/tongue and the formation of a new lava dome/lava tongue. The destruction of the lava dome/tongue resulted in the formation of hot avalanche clouds which are characteristic of Mount Semeru.
https://magma.esdm.go.id/v1/press-release/205?signature=eea357a33aa5033ff8930a783defb7d6b1818f11345506a8c31199fab5149d3c
Ok ren, but what’s the connection to the head post?
“intense bursts of volcanism are more typically linked to massive CO2 release, which should drive global warming, so another process must be responsible for sudden cooling events”, explains Dr Gernon. This prompted the team to consider whether a secondary process—natural breakdown or ‘weathering’ of the volcanic material—may have provided the surge in phosphorus need to explain the glaciations.”
Translation: Since we blindly follow the CAGW gods, we had to dream up some other weird explanation of why increasing amounts of CO2 didn’t obey our religion.
“These organisms eventually settle to the seabed and are buried, ultimately reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.” And yet the environtards want to do the same with artificial “sequestration” of Co2 on a massive scale. They have no idea what will result from their idiotic crap they just really want to do it because they hate people and capitalism. Bunch of mal-educated morons.
If this study has any validity it needs to be rammed up the “climate activist” community’s ass until they figure out just how stupid they really are.
Hmmm…. I’m a bit confused here.
Algae are plants, right? Plants absorb CO2. Algae can consume more CO2 than trees, and unless I got the gas exchange mixed up with a glass of milk, this actioin releases more O2 into the oceans, so….. Also, small critters like phytoplankton, crustaceans and small fish feed on algae, and they, in turn become food for slightly larger critters such as small sharks, slightly bigger fish, corals and baleen whales, which info seems to have gone missing from that article.
It’s part of the Circle of Life, which seems to be ignored by those people.
So, what was the problem, again?
When algae die, they rot, which consumes oxygen in the water.
It’s a well known phenomena and often occurs in areas where large amounts of agricultural fertilizers are present in run-off.
There were no trees in the Ordovician, or other land plants, or whales. There were some proto-sharks, proto-corals, brachiopods, and trilobites. The oceanic green algae was responsible for all the photosynthesis.
Which means green algae caused all the carbon fixing and oxygen release from the precursor CO2. The decay process did not consume all the freed oxygen nor the fixed carbon. The latter got deposited on sea floors, and the former rusted rocks and continued to increase in concentration in the atmosphere.
That’s algal bloom, which frequently coincides with an excess of nitrogen in runoff from farmland. The organism either does its job or overdoes it, depending on what is in the water these days. Algae can either benefit water critters or poison the water – or both. I’ve seen matts of algae in a popular local fishing lake that appear for no reason and have to be cleaned out, and that tiny organism will even grow in the wood of the hand rail on my front steps. Then it has to be sprayed with a good algacide.
Not arguing with you, MarkW, not at all. I know both its benefits and its level of nuisance. It is a PIA!!! It was all over my front and back steps this fall, and we’ve had so much rain that spraying it is a waste of time.
But it does have its uses. It’s like someone who gets a big bonus check at work: either it goes into the savings account (oxygenates the water) or it gets blown on junk (algae bloom!) and has to be removed. We’re DOOMED!!!!
Climate alarmists often claim that excess CO2 will cause, or is causing, or even has caused mass extinctions in the past[2].
In the immortal word of the great Gilda Radner (as Emily Litella)…
She also famously said, “It’s always something.”
“These organisms eventually settle to the seabed and are buried, ultimately reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then causes cooling.”
It seems that the authors ignore that there are food chains in the depths of oceans, and that they prcess organic substances very much like their equivalent at the surface of oceans, or in soils, or above the eaarth…
Ignorance pays: if you ignore what challenges The Narrative, you are payed: you get published in so-colled “scientific” journals and you get promoted and publicised by the msm.
Sorry, my mistake: I wrote “ignorance pays”, which is factually not true: WE THE PEOPLE pay with our taxes.
Have I been mis-reading geology’s explanation that the frequently very thick limestone deposits found all around the world are most often from the slow collection (sedimentation) of the calcium carbonate shells of phytoplankton and other small beasties?
No, you did not. But those are not their “living matter”. Shells are in the carbon cycle just as the “soft” bodies of organisms; though, due to their chemical composition, they remain inert for longer — and eventually become “forever” immobilized as rocks under certain conditions.
This article would make more sense if all references to CO2 were left out. The relationship of ocean fertilization, atmospheric dust, and lowered oxygen levels all could lead to climatic changes and some level of extinctions. CO2, not so much. A change in CO2 levels is more likely a result than a cause. Timelines and resolutions are so blurred at that distance into the past than any conclusion could only be considered a maybe, a perhaps, or a coulda happened.
“This article would make more sense if all references to CO2 were left out.”
I agree.
CO2 blinds them to everything else.
“Timelines and resolutions are so blurred at that distance into the past than any conclusion could only be considered a maybe, a perhaps, or a coulda happened.”
Yes. Timing, resolution and blurry. Despite the amazing modern technologies, there are many limitations. So, we have a new and interesting hypothesis but nothing more. Nice work but …
I just listened to a great lecture by Harold Tobin in which he stated that there is no sea basin on earth older then 190 million years because of subduction. Therefore where are these ancient sediments coming from?
Over the long run, it makes sense to dump our nuclear waste in those subduction zones…although. so far it seems the early waste has potential to be fuel again in newer reactors…..
That makes even less sense that the pouring of treasure into the intermittent energy sinkhole. Radioactive is treasure.
It makes no sense to dump our radioactive waste anywhere. It’s not waste, it’s fuel. All we have to do is start reprocessing it again.
Many sediments exist today as metamorphized rock or other consolidated stones that at one time were ancient sea beds. Sometimes thousands of feet above current sea levels.
Modern analytical science can deduce much from from these but it is also easy to draw false conclusions. There is good reason why the words may or perhaps appear often in most studies. Some conclusions are no more than wishful thinking or the authors perception of what they believe should be the reality.
Kind of like the pressure balance in the atmosphere — hot air rising somewhere is always balanced by cold air sinking elsewhere — crust of the earth subducting somewhere is balanced by uplift elsewhere. Much of today’s dry land was once ocean bottom.
Three words: Orogeny, accretion (adding islands and uplifted sediment to the continent, Mountain uplift.
Otherwise, sediments get recycled.
Did you mean as referenced in this phrase:
Everyone, except alarmists, knows that studying new sediment is not equivalent to studying very ancient sediment.
Pay attention the the methods used in the research above. It is all imaginary self satisfaction simulations.
This is the kind of study you get when you try to fit CO2 into all the scenarios.
It must be CO2, they say to themselves, so there must be a conection.
I think the CO2 focus is blinding them and making them go down false pathways to try to explain what the data says.
CO2 is constraining their imaginations.
There’s more than just Phosphorus comes out of volcanoes
If those volcanoes didn’t happen, we’d not be here talking about them.
This ice age also matches the 150 million year occurrence cycle that predates complex life on earth. The hypothesis of solar system crossings the galactic disk also applies
The authors are grasping at straws, and considering that carbon dioxide levels where about 10 times current levels the likely purpose of this paper is propaganda
“Volcanoes both cool and warm Earth’s climate”
An interesting perspective from Peter Langdon Ward at…
https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/volcanoes-and-climate/
Volcanoes are the control knob on the side of the CO2 control knob.
It’s knobs all the way down.
I told you we shouldn’t have caused all those volcanoes ….but did you listen ?
Scoff all you want Doug. But the real problem with volcanoes is our failure to throw in enough autistic Swedish teenaged truants.
How rude!
Sacrificing truants?
How dare you!
What 440+ million year old being are you nagging?
And the research’s product shows results one expects from preprogrammed confirmation bias.
You guys are wrong to laugh at this. I fertilize my pond in the spring, and within four to six months the climate cools! Take that, skeptics!
Yes I see your point. And initially the fertilizing warms the climate for a few months but eventually the cooling sets in?
Exactly. We can build a great climate model based on the fact that this happens 97% of the time.
Unintended consequences seem to be a rule for the way people behave when making decisions based on political criteria, so I would expect such from DC.
It may be nice to imagine that issues are simple and that one or two actions accomplish something useful, but that’s not how the world works.
It certainly didn’t cause the photosynthetic organisms to go extinct. They would have been like a tramp on chips.
Curious that this narrative doesn’t mention that the end-Ordovician glaciation occurred while atmospheric CO2 was very high at several thousand ppm. Why would they forget that detail?
Volcanoes are the get-out-of-jail-free card for CO2-revisionist paleo climate, for whenever the CO2 control knob fails.
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/the-ordovician-glaciation-glaciers-spread-while-co2-increased-in-the-atmosphere-a-problem-for-carbon-alarmism/
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/the-cult-of-carbon-dioxide-is-leading-palaeo-climate-research-on-a-road-to-nowhere/
“But intense bursts of volcanism are more typically linked to massive CO2 release, which should drive global warming…”
Carbon dioxide is a coolant! Its denser nature speeds up conduction as fast as it’s released. Remember thermodynamics? Well, the atmosphere isn’t immune to thermodynamics, you know! Good God!
The role of exhalative volcanics landing in brines (seas) was described by the late Professor R L Stanton in 1987. These volcanics lead to the formation of fine shale deposits at various times throughout geological history. The intriguing aspect of these shales is not only they are responsible for mass extinction events they are also providing the mechanism for distributing large volumes of metals of all classes over vast areas. Later events such as metamorphic activity see the mobilisation of metals from the black shales leading to the accumulations we see today. Famous gold ones include the mid-Ordovician Bendigo Goldfield and the mid Proterozoic Witswatersrand Gold deposits. All of these deposits and many others besides have associated black shales nearby that are all of volcanic affiliation. Later while working in the mid-Devonian shales of the mid west petroleum basins of the USA I found similar geochemical associations with the Bendigo slates and the south Africa equivalents. All of these shales/slates had a high TOC component as well as those from the mid Devonian ‘sedimentary basins. The fossil and bacteria made up most of the TOC. Not a favoured concept by any means – the topic always raises the hackles when brough up.