Carbon dioxide forcing and PETM warming
Sep 16, 2009 - by Staff
Richard Zeebe, James Zachos, and Gerald Dickens, Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum warming. Nature Geoscience 2 (2009), 576–580
About 55 million years ago, temperatures rose by 5–9°C(9–16°F) over a few thousand years. The cause is presumed to be a pulse of carbon released from an unknown source. Using paleorecords and a carbon cycle model, the authors estimate that atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by only about 70% above pre-event levels, which would explain less than half of the proxy-inferred warming. They conclude that unknown processes and/or feedbacks played an important role in the temperature rise.
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ • RICE UNIVERSITY