Abstract
Atmospheric carbon dioxide reached a record concentration of 419 parts per million in May 2021, 50% higher than preindustrial levels at 280 parts per million. The rise of CO2 as a heat-trapping gas is the principal barometer tracking global warming attributed to a global average increase of 1.2 °C over the last 250 years. Ongoing global warming is expected to perturb extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones (hurricanes/typhoons), strengthened by elevated sea-surface temperatures. The melting of polar ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland also is expected to result in rising sea levels through the rest of this century. Various proxies for the estimate of long-term change in sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) are available through geological oceanography, which relies on the recovery of deep-sea cores for the study of sediments enriched in temperature-sensitive planktonic foraminifera and other algal residues. The Pliocene Warm Period occurred between ~4.5 and 3.0 million years ago, when sea level and average global temperatures were higher than today, and it is widely regarded as a predictive analog to the future impact of climate change. This work reviews some of the extensive literature on the geological oceanography of the Pliocene Warm Period together with a summary of land-based studies in paleotempestology focused on coastal boulder deposits (CBDs) and coastal outwash deposits (CODs) from the margin of the Pacific basin and parts of the North Atlantic basin. Ranging in age from the Pliocene through the Holocene, the values of such deposits serve as fixed geophysical markers, against which the micro-fossil record for the Pliocene Warm Period may be compared, as a registry of storm events from Pliocene and post-Pliocene times.
Highlights
Literature Review on the Pliocene Warm Period Based on Deep-Sea Cores
Heydt et al (2011) [44] projects a western shift in the position of the cold tongue due to equatorial upwelling by up to 2000 km, but does not consider the possible influence of counter flow against the California and Humboldt currents or the altered strength of the Pertinent to the Pliocene Warm Period, as generally defined between ~4.5 and 3.0 million years ago [16,17], this review combines and attempts to balance research results not usually treated in the same discussion
The two fields of study consulted are those based on temperature-sensitive planktonic foraminifera and other organics retrieved as fossil remains from deep-sea cores, contrasted against land-based studies of non-biological accumulations preserved as coastal boulder deposits (CBDs) and coastal outwash deposits (CODs)
Summary
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide fluctuated but did not rise above 280 parts per million prior to that era, based on the method of dry analysis of air inclusions preserved in ice cores recovered from deep within the glacial ice at the Vostok site in Antarctica [2]. Samples of ancient air, trapped in bubbles frozen in glacial ice at different levels within ice cores, track variations in CO2 concentrations over a span of 800,000 years, all at or below the level characterized by the pre-industrial age. The Keeling Curve is based on analysis of air samples for resident CO2 measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the big island of Hawaii, initiated in 1958 and maintained to the present day by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric.
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