Enhanced chemistry-climate feedbacks in past greenhouse worlds

Enhanced chemistry-climate feedbacks in past greenhouse worlds [1]

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Trace greenhouse gases are a fundamentally important component of Earth’s global climate system sensitive to global change. However, their concentration in the pre-Pleistocene atmosphere during past warm greenhouse climates is highly uncertain because we lack suitable geochemical or biological proxies. This long-standing issue hinders assessment of their contribution to past global warmth and the equilibrium climate sensitivity of the Earth system (E_ss) to CO₂. Here we report results from a series of three-dimensional Earth system modeling simulations indicating that the greenhouse worlds of the early Eocene (55 Ma) and late Cretaceous (90 Ma) maintained high concentrations of methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/24/9770.abstract?etoc [2]

Publication Date:

31/05/2011

Author(s): David J. Beerling [3], Andrew Fox [4], David S. Stevenson & et al [5]

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [6]

Vol:

108

Issue:

pp:

9770

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