Journal ArticleDOI
Persistent near-tropical warmth on the Antarctic continent during the early Eocene epoch
Jörg Pross,L. Contreras,Peter K. Bijl,David R. Greenwood,Steven M Bohaty,Stefan Schouten,James A Bendle,Ursula Röhl,Lisa Tauxe,J. Ian Raine,Claire E Huck,Tina van de Flierdt,Stewart S. R. Jamieson,Catherine E. Stickley,Bas van de Schootbrugge,Carlota Escutia,Henk Brinkhuis +16 more
TLDR
It is shown that the climate in lowland settings along the Wilkes Land coast (at a palaeolatitude of about 70° south) supported the growth of highly diverse, near-tropical forests characterized by mesothermal to megathermal floral elements including palms and Bombacoideae.Abstract:
The warmest global climates of the past 65 million years occurred during the early Eocene epoch (about 55 to 48 million years ago), when the Equator-to-pole temperature gradients were much smaller than today1, 2 and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were in excess of one thousand parts per million by volume3, 4. Recently the early Eocene has received considerable interest because it may provide insight into the response of Earth’s climate and biosphere to the high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are expected in the near future5 as a consequence of unabated anthropogenic carbon emissions4, 6. Climatic conditions of the early Eocene ‘greenhouse world’, however, are poorly constrained in critical regions, particularly Antarctica. Here we present a well-dated record of early Eocene climate on Antarctica from an ocean sediment core recovered off the Wilkes Land coast of East Antarctica. The information from biotic climate proxies (pollen and spores) and independent organic geochemical climate proxies (indices based on branched tetraether lipids) yields quantitative, seasonal temperature reconstructions for the early Eocene greenhouse world on Antarctica. We show that the climate in lowland settings along the Wilkes Land coast (at a palaeolatitude of about 70° south) supported the growth of highly diverse, near-tropical forests characterized by mesothermal to megathermal floral elements including palms and Bombacoideae. Notably, winters were extremely mild (warmer than 10 °C) and essentially frost-free despite polar darkness, which provides a critical new constraint for the validation of climate models and for understanding the response of high-latitude terrestrial ecosystems to increased carbon dioxide forcing.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The organic geochemistry of glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether lipids: A review
TL;DR: Progress made over the last decade in the analysis, occurrence and recognition of sources of GDGTs, their applications as biomarker lipids, and the development and application of proxies based on their distributions are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Climate model and proxy data constraints on ocean warming across the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Tom Dunkley Jones,Daniel J. Lunt,Daniela N. Schmidt,Andy Ridgwell,Appy Sluijs,Paul J. Valdes,Mark A. Maslin +6 more
TL;DR: The authors provided a new compilation and synthesis of the available marine proxy temperature data across the largest of these hyperthermals, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).
Journal ArticleDOI
The Coexistence Approach—Theoretical background and practical considerations of using plant fossils for climate quantification
Torsten Utescher,Angela A Bruch,Boglarka Erdei,Louis François,Dimiter Ivanov,Frédéric M.B. Jacques,Andrea K. Kern,Yu-Sheng (Christopher) Liu,Volker Mosbrugger,Robert A. Spicer +9 more
TL;DR: The Coexistence Approach as discussed by the authors is a plant-based method to reconstruct palaeoclimate by considering recent climatic distribution ranges of the nearest living relatives of each fossil taxon.
Journal ArticleDOI
Eocene cooling linked to early flow across the Tasmanian Gateway
Peter K. Bijl,James A Bendle,Steven M Bohaty,Jörg Pross,Stefan Schouten,Lisa Tauxe,Catherine E. Stickley,Robert M. McKay,Ursula Röhl,M. Olney,Appy Sluijs,Carlota Escutia,Henk Brinkhuis,Expedition Scientists +13 more
TL;DR: Although atmospheric CO2 forcing alone would provide a more uniform middle Eocene cooling, the opening of the Tasmanian Gateway better explains Southern Ocean surface water and global deep ocean cooling in the apparent absence of (sub-) equatorial cooling.
Journal ArticleDOI
Synchronous tropical and polar temperature evolution in the Eocene
Margot J. Cramwinckel,Matthew Huber,Ilja Kocken,Claudia Agnini,Peter K. Bijl,Steven M Bohaty,Joost Frieling,Aaron Goldner,Frederik J Hilgen,Elizabeth L Kip,Francien Peterse,Robin van der Ploeg,Ursula Röhl,Stefan Schouten,Appy Sluijs +14 more
TL;DR: A 26-million-year record of equatorial sea surface temperatures reveals synchronous changes of tropical and polar temperatures during the Eocene epoch forced by variations in concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, with a constant degree of polar amplification.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300
Malte Meinshausen,Malte Meinshausen,Steven J. Smith,Katherine Calvin,John S. Daniel,Mikiko Kainuma,Jean-Francois Lamarque,Ken'ichi Matsumoto,Ken'ichi Matsumoto,Stephen A. Montzka,Sarah C. B. Raper,Keywan Riahi,Allison M. Thomson,Guus J. M. Velders,D.P. van Vuuren,D.P. van Vuuren +15 more
TL;DR: In this article, the greenhouse gas concentrations for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and their extensions beyond 2100, the Extended ConcentrationPathways (ECPs), are presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics
TL;DR: Past episodes of greenhouse warming provide insight into the coupling of climate and the carbon cycle and thus may help to predict the consequences of unabated carbon emissions in the future.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cenozoic deep-sea temperatures and global ice volumes from Mg/Ca in benthic foraminiferal calcite
TL;DR: A deep-sea temperature record for the past 50 million years has been produced from the magnesium/calcium ratio (Mg/Ca) in benthic foraminiferal calcite as discussed by the authors.
Book ChapterDOI
Alternative global Cretaceous paleogeography
William W. Hay,Robert M. DeConto,Christopher N. Wold,Kevin M. Wilson,Silke Voigt,Michael Schulz,Adrienne Rossby Wold,Wolf-Christian Dullo,Alexander B. Ronov,Alexander N. Balukhovsky,Emanuel Söding +10 more
TL;DR: The early Cretaceous is one of three large continental blocks with large contiguous land areas surrounded by shallow epicontinental waters at high sea-level stands as discussed by the authors, and there were no deep-water passages to the Arctic.
Journal ArticleDOI
The coexistence approach — a method for quantitative reconstructions of Tertiary terrestrial palaeoclimate data using plant fossils
TL;DR: In this paper, the coexistence approach is introduced as a method for quantitative terrestrial palaeoclimate reconstructions in the Tertiary, based on the assumption that the nearest living relatives of the fossil flora have similar climatic requirements to their closest living relatives.
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