Friday, Jul. 30, 2021
Was there an ice age in the Earth’s past when CO2 was 3000ppm?
There was an ice age around 290 to 340 million years ago during the Paleozoic, but CO2 was relatively low, at about 390ppm. A supercontinent at the South Pole, major mountain building, massive carbon burial in sediments (forming coal), along with a 3% dimmer sun back then, contributed to the low CO2 and cold climate.
Data spanning more than 400 million years show that climate and CO2 levels vary together. During ice ages, CO2 levels were low, and during warm periods, CO2 was higher. For example, in the hot Eocene around 40 to 56 million years ago, there were no polar ice caps, temperatures were about 10ºC hotter than in the 20th century, and CO2 was about 1,500ppm. In contrast, during the last Ice Age, CO2 varied between about 180 and 300ppm, close to Paleozoic Ice Age levels, as ice sheets waxed and waned with orbital wobbles.
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Sources
- Earth and Planetary Science Letters Late Paleozoic Ice Age glaciers shaped East Antarctica landscape
- Nature Climate, p CO2 and terrestrial carbon cycle linkages during late Palaeozoic glacial–interglacial cycles
- Annual Reviews Extra An Atlas of Phanerozoic Paleogeographic Maps: Plate Tectonics Pgeog & Ice
- Nature Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years
- Science An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years
- Annual Reviews Atmospheric CO2 over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archives
- Palaeo-CO2 CO2 in the geological past
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