Ancient alteration of seawater chemistry linked with past climate change
20 Jul 2012
Scientists have discovered a potential cause of Earth's "icehouse climate" cooling trend of the past 45 million years. It has everything to do with the chemistry of the world's oceans.
"Seawater chemistry is characterised by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change," says geoscientist Ulrich Wortmann of the University of Toronto, lead author of a paper reporting the results and published this week in the journal Science.
"We've established a new framework that helps us better interpret evolutionary trends and climate change over long periods of time. The study focuses on the past 130 million years, but similar interactions have likely occurred through the past 500 million years."
Wortmann and co-author Adina Paytan of the University of California Santa Cruz point to the collision between India and Eurasia approximately 50 million years ago as one example of an interval of rapid change.
This collision enhanced dissolution of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan and well into western India. Remnants of the collision are exposed in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran.
The dissolution or creation of such massive gypsum deposits changes the sulfate content of the ocean, say the scientists, affecting the amount of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and thus climate.
