Abstract
Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are associated with the largest climate perturbations in Earth’s history. The North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP) and Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) constitute an exemplar of this association. As yet we have no means to reconstruct the pacing of LIP greenhouse gas emissions for comparison with climate records at millennial resolution. Here, we calculate carbon-based greenhouse gas fluxes associated with the NAIP at sub-millennial resolution by linking measurements of the mantle convection process that generated NAIP magma with observations of the individual geological structures that controlled gas emissions in a Monte Carlo framework. These simulations predict peak emissions flux of 0.2–0.5 PgC yr–1 and show that the NAIP could have initiated PETM climate change. This is the first predictive model of carbon emissions flux from any proposed PETM carbon source that is directly constrained by observations of the geological structures that controlled the emissions.
Highlights
Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are associated with the largest climate perturbations in Earth’s history
Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP) LIP and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) are closely coincident in time[11,12,13], the rate and duration of North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP) carbon emissions have not yet been reconciled with the
There is a large body of work on contact metamorphism next to igneous sheets[25], no studies provide time-series of methane emissions flux that we can use for stochastic modelling and few studies model methane generation directly
Summary
Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are associated with the largest climate perturbations in Earth’s history. We calculate carbon-based greenhouse gas fluxes associated with the NAIP at sub-millennial resolution by linking measurements of the mantle convection process that generated NAIP magma with observations of the individual geological structures that controlled gas emissions in a Monte Carlo framework These simulations predict peak emissions flux of 0.2–0.5 PgC yr–1 and show that the NAIP could have initiated PETM climate change. Temporal associations between Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) and perturbations to global climate, ecosystems and the carbon cycle occur throughout Mesozoic time, from the Permo-Triassic mass extinction (the most devastating in Earth’s history) through multiple Ocean Anoxic Events[1,2] They imply that greenhouse gases released directly by LIPs can initiate global change that persists over 104–105 years. This seafloor uplift would have altered oceanic circulation[19] and regional climate[20], which could have led more indirectly to pulsed greenhouse gas release[21]
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