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A middle Eocene carbon cycle conundrum

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 429–434 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO) was an approximately 500,000-year-long episode of widespread ocean–atmosphere warming about 40 million years ago, superimposed on a long-term middle Eocene cooling trend. It was marked by a rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, biotic changes and prolonged carbonate dissolution in the deep ocean. However, based on carbon cycle theory, a rise in atmospheric CO2 and warming should have enhanced continental weathering on timescales of the MECO. This should have in turn increased ocean carbonate mineral saturation state and carbonate burial in deep-sea sediments, rather than the recorded dissolution. We explore several scenarios using a carbon cycle model in an attempt to reconcile the data with theory, but these simulations confirm the problem. The model only produces critical MECO features when we invoke a sea-level rise, which redistributes carbonate burial from deep oceans to continental shelves and decreases shelf sediment weathering. Sufficient field data to assess this scenario is currently lacking. We call for an integrated approach to unravel Earth system dynamics during carbon cycle variations that are of intermediate timescales (several hundreds of thousands of years), such as the MECO.

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Figure 1: Fluxes between the carbon reservoirs in the present-day carbon cycle.
Figure 2: A compilation of proxy data across the MECO.
Figure 3: Results of the LOSCAR model run corresponding to the MECO target.

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Acknowledgements

This research used data generated on sediments provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). We thank L. Kump (Penn State) for discussions and T. Markus (Utrecht University) for illustration support. The European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Program provided funding for this work by ERC Starting Grant #259627 to A.S. This paper resulted from a sabbatical stay of R.E.Z. at Utrecht University, funded through a Visitors Travel Grant awarded to A.S. by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO grant #040.11.305).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, Utrecht, 3584 CD, the Netherlands

    Appy Sluijs & Peter K. Bijl

  2. Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA

    Richard E. Zeebe

  3. Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, European Way, Southampton, SO14 3ZH, UK

    Steven M. Bohaty

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  1. Appy Sluijs
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Contributions

A.S. identified the carbon cycle conundrum. R.E.Z. carried out the modelling. P.K.B. and S.M.B. provided ideas and performed the final data compilation. A.S. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Appy Sluijs.

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Sluijs, A., Zeebe, R., Bijl, P. et al. A middle Eocene carbon cycle conundrum. Nature Geosci 6, 429–434 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1807

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