Archives par mot-clé : Carbon Isotopes

climate and geology

Early Cretaceous shift in the global carbon cycle affected both land and sea

by University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Feb 22, 2023 in ScienceDaily

Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in Europe. This ancient carbon-cycle phenomenon, known as the ‘Weissert Event’ was driven by large, sustained volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere that greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and produced significant greenhouse climate effects over a prolonged time.

Scientific research in recent decades has confirmed that major changes in the global carbon cycle caused significant changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans 135 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. A range of questions remain about the details of climate change dynamics in that era. This new research, involving wide-ranging chemical and radioactivity-based analyses of rock strata in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation, helps fill in that knowledge gap by confirming that such carbon-cycle shifts were recorded on land in ancient North America.

The carbon cycle is one of Earth’s fundamental environmental phenomena, involving the ongoing transfer of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans and living organisms, as well as soils, sediments and rocks in the solid Earth. The cycle is crucial to biological processes for living things on land and sea. When large-scale changes in the cycle occur, they can produce major shifts in climate and the oceans’ biological conditions.

“We’re studying how the global carbon cycle has functioned in the past, how changes are recorded in the sedimentary rocks around the world,” said Joeckel, a professor in the School of Natural Resources at Nebraska. The environmental phenomena he and his colleagues analyzed “are exactly the kind of things we’re talking about today, as people increase the input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a much-accelerated rate by burning fossil fuels.”

Joeckel, the Nebraska state geologist, headed the Utah fieldwork and organized the study, published as a peer-reviewed paper in a special February issue of the journal Geosciences.

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climate-debate

Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans

by JoNova from Murry Salby, December 27, 2019

Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.

Continuer la lecture de Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans →

climate-debate

La croissance du CO2 dans l’atmosphère est-elle exclusivement anthropique? (1/2) et Effet Suess

by J.C. Maurin, 13 juin 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Une croissance du CO2 atmosphérique qui serait exclusivement anthropique est contradictoire avec les observations du carbone 13 dans l’atmosphère (ici). Cet article en 2 parties va montrer qu’il existe également des contradictions avec les observations du carbone 14. Celui-ci  est utilisé à des fins de datation jusqu’à 50 000 ans BP  (Before Present)et on dispose de nombreuses études (pour calibration) sur son évolution dans l’atmosphère.  


La première partie s’intéresse, non pas aux datations, mais à la dilution du carbone 14 que provoque l’ajout de CO2 anthropique (effet SUESS)  avant les essais thermonucléaires de 1952-1963.
Dans la seconde partie nous verrons que l’évolution du carbone 14 après 1963 est aussi en contradiction avec une croissance du CO2 exclusivement anthropique.

1. Le carbone dans l’atmosphère [1] [5]

Le carbone existe habituellement sous 3 formes isotopiques : 12C pour ≈ 98.9% , 13C pour ≈ 1.1 % et 14C à l’état de traces (Fig. 1a).

Figure 1a.  La seule différence entre CO2 anthropique et CO2 atmosphérique réside dans les proportions du mélange des isotopes: le CO2 anthropique est appauvri en 13C et 14C.  L’ajout de CO2 anthropique va modifier, au fil des années, les proportions du mélange isotopique dans l’atmosphère.

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