Hydrological and associated biogeochemical consequences of rapid global warming during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Carmichael, Matthew; Inglis, Gordon N.; Badger, Marcus P. S.; Naafs, B. David A.; Behrooz, Leila; Remmelzwaal, Serginio; Monteiro, Fanny M.; Rohrssen, Megan; Farnsworth, Alexander; Buss, Heather L.; Dickson, Alexander J.; Valdes, Paul J.; Lunt, Daniel J.; Pancost, Richard D.

doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.07.014

Cited by 154 publications

(202 citation statements)

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“…Since its discovery, it has been evident that the PETM had severe consequences for marine and terrestrial systems (Crouch et al, ; Currano et al, ; Foreman et al, ; Gingerich, ; Koch et al, ; Koch et al, ; Kraus et al, ; McInerney & Wing, ; Sluijs et al, ; Thomas, ; Thomas & Monechi, ; Wing et al, ). Many of these paleo‐observations are consistent with predictions and observations of modern day Earth systems in response to anthropogenic climate change (Carmichael et al, ; McInerney & Wing, ; Zeebe et al, ).…”

Section: Leveraging Sedimentary Scales To Estimate Signal Preservatiosupporting

confidence: 80%

Buffered, Incomplete, and Shredded: The Challenges of Reading an Imperfect Stratigraphic Record

et al. 2020

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Climate, tectonics, and life influence the flux and caliber of sediment transported across Earth's surface. These environmental conditions can leave behind imprints in the Earth's sedimentary archive, but signals of climate, tectonic, and biologic change are not always present in the stratigraphic record. Deterministic and stochastic surface dynamics collectively act as a stratigraphic filter, impeding the burial and preservation of environmental signals in sedimentary deposits. Such impediments form a central challenge to accurately reconstructing environmental conditions through Earth's history. Emergent and self‐organized length and timescales in landscapes, which are themselves influenced by regional environmental conditions, define spatial and temporal sedimentation patterns in basins and fundamentally control the likelihood of environmental signal preservation in sedimentary deposits. Properly characterizing these scales provides a key avenue for incorporating the known “imperfections” of the stratigraphic record into paleoenvironmental reconstructions. These insights are necessary for answering both basic and applied science questions, including our ability to reconstruct the Earth system response to prior episodes of climate, tectonic, or land cover change.

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Section: Leveraging Sedimentary Scales To Estimate Signal Preservatiosupporting

confidence: 80%

Buffered, Incomplete, and Shredded: The Challenges of Reading an Imperfect Stratigraphic Record

et al. 2020

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“…Regions of enhanced warming are recognized in both the northern midlatitudes and southern midlatitudes and high latitudes, which shows that the mechanism underlying extratropical amplification was not fully saturated even in these strong greenhouse climates (Frieling et al, 2017). The warming during the PETM is associated with sea level rise (Sluijs et al, 2008b), local photic zone euxinia Frieling et al, 2014Frieling et al, , 2017, global expansion of anoxic waters (Dickson et al, 2012), and an accelerated hydrological cycle Schmitz and Pujalte, 2007;Sluijs and Brinkhuis, 2009;Handley et al, 2012;Carmichael et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical Atlantic climate and ecosystem regime shifts during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum

et al. 2018

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Abstract. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56 Ma) was a phase of rapid global warming associated with massive carbon input into the ocean-atmosphere system from a 13 C-depleted reservoir. Many midlatitude and high-latitude sections have been studied and document changes in salinity, hydrology and sedimentation, deoxygenation, biotic overturning, and migrations, but detailed records from tropical regions are lacking. Here, we study the PETM at Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 959 in the equatorial Atlantic using a range of organic and inorganic proxies and couple these with dinoflagellate cyst (dinocyst) assemblage analysis. The PETM at Site 959 was previously found to be marked by a ∼ 3.8 ‰ negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE) and a ∼ 4 • C surface ocean warming from the uppermost Paleocene to peak PETM, of which ∼ 1 • C occurs before the onset of the CIE. We record upper Paleocene dinocyst assemblages that are similar to PETM assemblages as found in extratropical regions, confirming poleward migrations of ecosystems during the PETM. The early stages of the PETM are marked by a typical acme of the tropical genus Apectodinium, which reaches abundances of up to 95 %. Subsequently, dinocyst abundances diminish greatly, as do carbonate and pyritized silicate microfossils. The combined paleoenvironmental information from Site 959 and a close-by shelf site in Nigeria implies the general absence of eukaryotic surface-dwelling microplankton during peak PETM warmth in the eastern equatorial Atlantic, most likely caused by heat stress. We hypothesize, based on a literature survey, that heat stress might have reduced calcification in more tropical regions, potentially contributing to reduced deep sea carbonate accumulation rates, and, by buffering acidification, also to biological carbonate compensation of the injected carbon during the PETM. Crucially, abundant organic benthic foraminiferal linings imply sustained export production, likely driven by prokaryotes. In sharp contrast, the recovery of the CIE yields rapid ( 10 kyr) fluctuations in the abundance of several dinocyst groups, suggesting extreme ecosystem and environmental variability.

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“…• Dramatic increases in sedimentation rates during the main phase of the PETM are interpreted to represent significant changes in regional hydrology, most likely an increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall and runoff events, potentially within an overall lower mean annual precipitation regime (Carmichael et al, 2017;Carmichael et al, 2016). These changes in sedimentation accumulation rates -and inferred perturbations to hydrology -persist throughout the PETM interval, 20 only returning towards pre-event levels during the rapid phase of CIE recovery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This production / remineralization balance will control the availability of newly formed sedimentary organic carbon for long-term burial in the sedimentary carbon sink (Cotton 25 et al, 2015). During conditions of peak PETM warmth, enhanced organic carbon remineralization in terrestrial systems may have drastically limited the flux to continental margin systems, but with even a gradual recovery from peak-warmth conditions -forced, for example, by known enhanced carbon burial in the anoxic marine basins of the eastern Tethys during the peak-PETM (Carmichael et al, 2017) -a subtle shift in the production to respiration balance towards the availability of organic carbon for long-30 term burial, combined with a precession-forced peak in sediment flux and accumulation rates across terrestrial and continental margin systems, could account for the magnitude and timing of the sudden switch to widespread carbon sequestration required during the CIE recovery phase. The greatly enhanced detrital accumulation rates observed in continental margin settings such as Zumaia could also effectively mask patterns of enhanced burial of newly formed organic matter (Sluijs et al, 2014), unless 35 sedimentation rates within the PETM can be accurately constrained.…”

Section: Carbon Removal During the Petm Recoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One means of increasing global organic carbon burial rates is through enhanced sedimentation rates on continental margins, which might contribute significantly to C org burial rates with little or no rise in measured total weight percent organic carbon content of sediments (Sluijs et al, 30 2014). There is also direct evidence for substantial increases in the organic carbon content of syn-PETM marine sediments in the eastern Tethys, associated with increased terrestrial to marine weathering fluxes and reduced seawater oxygenation (Carmichael et al, 2017;Gavrilov et al, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Orbital forcing of terrestrial hydrology, weathering and carbon sequestration during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Jones

Manners

Hoggett

et al. 2017

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Abstract. The response of the Earth System to greenhouse-gas driven warming is of critical importance for the future trajectory of our planetary environment. Hypethermal events -past climate transients with 25 significant global-scale warming -can provide insights into the nature and magnitude of these responses. The largest hyperthermal of the Cenozoic was the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM ~56 Ma). Here we present a new high-resolution cyclostratigraphy for the classic PETM section at Zumaia, Spain. With this new age model we are able to demonstrate that detrital sediment accumulation rates within this continental margin section increased more than four-fold during the 30 PETM, representing a radical change in regional hydrology that drove dramatic increases in terrestrial to marine sediment flux. During the body of the PETM, orbital-scale variations in bulk sediment Si/Fe ratios are evidence for the continued orbital pacing of sediment erosion and transport processes, most likely linked to precession controls on sub-tropical hydroclimates. Most remarkable is that detrital accumulation rates remain high throughout the body of the PETM, and even reach peak values during 35 the recovery phase of the characteristic PETM carbon isotope excursion (CIE). Using a series of Earth System Model inversions, we demonstrate that the silicate weathering feedback alone is insufficient to recover the PETM CIE, and that active organic carbon burial is required to match the observed dynamics of the CIE. Further, that the period of maximum organic carbon sequestration coincides with the peak in detrital accumulation rates observed at Zumaia. Based on these results, we hypothesize that 40Clim. Past Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2017-131 Manuscript under review for journal Clim. Past Discussion started: 16 November 2017 c Author(s) 2017. CC BY 4.0 License. 2 precession controls on tropical and sub-tropical hydroclimates, and the sediment dynamics associated with this variation, play a significant role in the timing of the rapid climate and CIE recovery from peak-PETM conditions.

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Hydrological and associated biogeochemical consequences of rapid global warming during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Cited by 154 publications

References 253 publications

Buffered, Incomplete, and Shredded: The Challenges of Reading an Imperfect Stratigraphic Record

Buffered, Incomplete, and Shredded: The Challenges of Reading an Imperfect Stratigraphic Record

Tropical Atlantic climate and ecosystem regime shifts during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum

Orbital forcing of terrestrial hydrology, weathering and carbon sequestration during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

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