Paleoclimate Content

Buried Alive: Carbon Dioxide Release From Magma Deep Beneath Ancient Volcanoes a Hidden Driver of Earth’s Past Climate

Andy Fell — October 30, 2024 - 2:34pm

An international team of geoscientists led by a volcanologist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and including Maxwell Rudolph, associate professor in the 51�ԹϺ�� Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of eruptions.

Taking the Earth’s Temperature Over the Past 485 Million Years

Andy Fell — September 19, 2024 - 10:36am

Palm trees in Alaska, crocodiles in Wyoming: Fossils show that Earth’s temperature has changed over hundreds of millions of years. Now a new study co-led by the Smithsonian and the University of Arizona, with Professor Isabel Montañez of the 51�ԹϺ�� Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has produced a curve of global mean surface temperatures over the past 485 million years. The new curve, published Sept. 19 in Science, reveals that Earth’s temperature has varied more than previously thought as life has diversified, populated land and endured multiple mass extinctions.

Carbon, Climate Change and Ocean Anoxia in an Ancient Icehouse World

Andy Fell — May 02, 2022 - 12:00pm

A new study describes a period of rapid global climate change in an ice-capped world much like the present — but 304 million years ago. Within about 300,000 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels doubled, oceans became anoxic, and biodiversity dropped on land and at sea.

Freezing Forests and the Icehouse Climate of Pangaea

Andy Fell — October 21, 2021 - 3:58pm

A new study by scientists at Baylor University, 51�ԹϺ�� Davis and others considers how tolerance of plants to freezing temperatures affected forest cover and hydrology during the Pennsylvanian period, roughly 340 million to 285 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era.