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- Title
Low CO<sub>2</sub> levels of the entire Pleistocene epoch.
- Authors
Da, Jiawei; Zhang, Yi Ge; Li, Gen; Meng, Xianqiang; Ji, Junfeng
- Abstract
Quantifying ancient atmospheric pCO2 provides valuable insights into the interplay between greenhouse gases and global climate. Beyond the 800-ky history uncovered by ice cores, discrepancies in both the trend and magnitude of pCO2 changes remain among different proxy-derived results. The traditional paleosol pCO2 paleobarometer suffers from largely unconstrained soil-respired CO2 concentration (S(z)). Using finely disseminated carbonates precipitated in paleosols from the Chinese Loess Plateau, here we identified that their S(z) can be quantitatively constrained by soil magnetic susceptibility. Based on this approach, we reconstructed pCO2 during 2.6–0.9 Ma, which documents overall low pCO2 levels (<300 ppm) comparable with ice core records, indicating that the Earth system has operated under late Pleistocene pCO2 levels for an extended period. The pCO2 levels do not show statistically significant differences across the mid-Pleistocene Transition (ca. 1.2–0.8 Ma), suggesting that CO2 is probably not the driver of this important climate change event. Climate dynamics in Earth's distant history can provide important forecasting for future changes, but uncertainties in proxy-derived carbon dioxide results are common. Here Da and colleagues present a refined paleosol proxy for carbon dioxide reconstruction, and report persistently low levels (< 300 ppm) throughout the Pleistocene interglacials.
- Subjects
PLEISTOCENE Epoch; PALEOPEDOLOGY; ICE cores; CARBON dioxide; GREENHOUSE gases; MAGNETIC susceptibility; PLATEAUS; CLIMATE change
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2019, Vol 10, Issue 1, pN.PAG
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-019-12357-5