Earth’s Orbital Patterns Connect The Timing Of Major Eruptions And Climate Change

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Over thousands to millions of years, Earth’s climate dynamics are influenced by external and internal processes. Earth’s interior contributes heat through radioactive decay and volcanic degassing, releasing compounds like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

Thick basaltic rock sequences of the West Indian Deccan Trap volcanic rocks. Photo: Blair Schoene, Princeton University. Image credit: Blair Schoene, Princeton University

Quasiperiodic changes in Earth’s orbit regulate incoming solar radiation and its distribution across latitudes, affecting the seasons’ length and intensity. These processes, through complex geochemical interactions, shape our climate.

“Just like a metronome, we used the rhythmic changes in solar insolation imprinted in geological data to synchronize geological climate archives from the South Atlantic and the Northwest Pacific. These key records span the last million years of the Cretaceous and are synchronized down to 5,000 years or less, geologically a blink of an eye 66 million years ago,” says lead author Thomas Westerhold from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen.

To unravel causality arguments in Earth climate history across regions, this kind of synchronization is essential. “So, we had the geological records perfectly lined up in time, and observed that two major changes in climate and biota occurred at the same time in both oceans. But we had to find a way to test if these changes are caused by large scale volcanic eruptions related to the Deccan Traps in India,” says Westerhold.

The up to two kilometers thick basaltic rocks of the Deccan Traps cover a large part of western India. This large-scale volcanism flooding entire landscapes is referred to as Large Igneous Province by geoscientists. Several times in Earth’s history these caused mass extinction events of life on the surface of the planet. Particularly the release of volcanic gases like carbon and sulfur dioxide during the formation of the flood basalts may have played a key role.

“The formation of the flood basalts and its subsequent weathering will leave a geochemical fingerprint in the ocean. Therefore, we measured the Osmium isotope composition of the South Atlantic and the Northwest Pacific deposits. They should show the same fingerprint at the same time,” says co-author Junichiro Kuroda (University Tokyo, Japan), who conducted the geochemical analyses.

“To our surprise we found two steps in the Osmium isotope composition in both oceans contemporaneous with major eruption phases of the Deccan Traps in the latest Cretaceous. And even more surprising those steps had different impacts on the environment as recorded by fossil remains in the drill cores,” says Thomas Westerhold.

The new data were difficult to understand, but geochemical modeling helped to unravel their secrets. “The volume of the erupted flood basalt must have been much larger than previously though during this early phase of Deccan Trap volcanism. And the related distinct emissions of carbon and sulfur dioxide had diverse effects on the global climate system,” says Don Penman (Utah State University, USA) who did the geochemical modeling.

According to the new finding, it seems plausible that at the onset of major Deccan Trap volcanism, independently dated 66.288 Million years by radioisotopic methods, an initial pulse with sulfur rich eruptions occurred stressing the ecosystem locally and possibly also globally.

Source:

MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen via Eurekalert

Paper

Written by Eddie Gonzales  Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer