Eocene global warming events driven by ventilation of oceanic dissolved organic carbon

by Ph.F. Sexton et al., Nature, 2011


‘Hyperthermals’ are intervals of rapid, pronounced global warming known from six episodes within the Palaeocene and Eocene epochs (~65–34million years (Myr) ago)12345678910111213. The most extreme hyperthermal was the ~170 thousand year (kyr) interval2 of 5–7°C global warming3 during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56Myr ago). The PETM is widely attributed to massive release of greenhouse gases from buried sedimentary carbon reservoirs1361114151617, and other, comparatively modest, hyperthermals have also been linked to the release of sedimentary carbon36111617

Egalement, une synthèse en français