Arido-eustasy: A new example of non-glacial eustatic sea level change

Abstract

Sea level fluctuation is common in the stratigraphical record and is partly explained by periodic polar glaciation. Such fluctuation in the absence of polar glaciation, during the warm periods of Earth's history, is poorly understood and currently under discussion. Here, I reconsider the palaeo-environmental information extracted from the variation in the carbon-isotope record and explain the phenomenon by coupling the levels of marine and fresh-water reservoirs through long-term wet and arid climate modes. The arido-eustasy model produces a standard anti-covariation pattern of marine organic and carbonate carbon-isotope records, which may appear throughout the geochemical record of the last 200 Myr. Under the model, orbitally forced periods of extremely wet climate result in environmental crisis, sea level falls, and carbon cycle perturbations, during which negative excursions in the marine organic carbon-isotope record of sediments containing matter from terrestrial vegetation should be understood as a proxy reporting periods of high precipitation rather than changes in the global carbon reservoir. I propose that the early Toarcian oceanic anoxic event is an example of arido-eustasy.