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Transient Middle Eocene Atmospheric CO2 and Temperature Variations
The Dependable Warmer
During the middle of the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, a transient warming event interrupted the long-term cooling trend that had been in progress for the previous 10 million years. Bijl et al. (p. 819; see the Perspective by Pearson) constructed records of sea surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations across the warming period. It appears that vast amounts of CO2 were injected into the atmosphere, and a sea surface temperature increase of as much a 6°C accompanied the atmospheric CO2 rise.
Abstract
The long-term warmth of the Eocene (~56 to 34 million years ago) is commonly associated with elevated partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2). However, a direct relationship between the two has not been established for short-term climate perturbations. We reconstructed changes in both pCO2 and temperature over an episode of transient global warming called the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO; ~40 million years ago). Organic molecular paleothermometry indicates a warming of southwest Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) by 3° to 6°C. Reconstructions of pCO2 indicate a concomitant increase by a factor of 2 to 3. The marked consistency between SST and pCO2 trends during the MECO suggests that elevated pCO2 played a major role in global warming during the MECO.
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 330 | Issue 6005
5 November 2010
5 November 2010
Copyright
Copyright © 2010, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 11 June 2010
Accepted: 17 September 2010
Published in print: 5 November 2010
Acknowledgments
This research used samples and data provided by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) sponsored by NSF and participating countries under the management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions Inc. We thank Utrecht University and the LPP foundation (P.K.B.), Statoil (A.J.P.H.), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (Vici grant to S.S.; Veni grant 863.07.001 to A.S.) for financial support. A.S. acknowledges the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program for ERC Starting Grant 259627. Groundwork for this research was provided at the Urbino Summer School of Paleoclimatology. We thank N. Welters, J. van Tongeren, J. Ossebaar, E. Hopmans, M. Kienhuis, G. Nobbe, E. van Bentum, E. Speelman, and E. van Soelen for technical support and M. Pagani, C. Stickley, J. Zachos, and two anonymous reviewers for invaluable discussions and comments.
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