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Consistent CO2 release by pyrite oxidation on continental shelves prior to glacial terminations

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 929–934 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Previous evidence suggests enhanced pyrite oxidation on exposed continental shelves during glacial phases of low sea level. While pyrite oxidation directly consumes atmospheric oxygen, acid generated by this reaction should increase the release of CO2 through carbonate dissolution. This scenario represents a climate control loop that could temper or even prevent glacials because increasing CO2 triggers warming and rising sea level. However, the amplitudes of sea-level changes increased over the Quaternary, and CO2 concentrations co-varied with sea level throughout most of the past 800,000 years. Only during peak glacial conditions did CO2 levels reach an apparent lower threshold independent of falling sea level. Here we suggest that during the last nine glacial–interglacial cycles, pyrite-oxidation-driven release of CO2 and consumption of O2 occurred during 10 kyr to 40 kyr periods preceding glacial terminations. We demonstrate that repeated sea-level lowstands force pyrite oxidation to ever-greater depths in exposed shelf sediments and cause CO2 release that could explain the glacial CO2 threshold. When the duration of interglacials with high sea level is insufficient to restock the shelf pyrite inventory, this CO2-releasing process represents a discharging ‘acid capacitor’.

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Fig. 1: Sea levels and atmospheric CO2 during the past 800 kyr.
Fig. 2: Interglacial pyrite burial and glacial pyrite oxidation on continental shelves.
Fig. 3: Sea level, atmospheric CO2 and O2, and pyrite oxidation during the past 800 kyr.
Fig. 4: Sea level, obliquity, modelled pyrite oxidation rates and position of the pyrite oxidation front.

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Data availability

The data created in this paper are available through https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.904761, the original composite CO2 dataset16 is available through https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/antarctica2015co2.xls and the original sea-level dataset1 is available through https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/bintanja2008/bintanja2008.xls

Code availability

The model code is available through https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.904761.

Change history

  • 03 December 2019

    The Supplementary Information data file ‘Reference run results’ has been updated to include the data contained in Figs. 1, 3 and 4 of the main text.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the DFG under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, no. EXC-2077–390741603.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Martin Kölling, Ilham Bouimetarhan, Marshall W. Bowles, Thomas Felis, Tobias Goldhammer, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, Michael Schulz & Matthias Zabel

  2. Faculté des Sciences Appliquées Ait Melloul, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco

    Ilham Bouimetarhan

  3. LUMCON, DeFelice Marine Center, Chauvin, LA, USA

    Marshall W. Bowles

  4. IGB, Department of Chemical Analytics and Biogeochemistry, Berlin, Germany

    Tobias Goldhammer

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Contributions

M.K. designed the model and drafted the manuscript with input from I.B., M.W.B., T.F., T.G., K.-U.H., M.S. and M.Z.

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Correspondence to Martin Kölling.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary text and Figs. 1–10.

Reference run results

Supplementary dataset

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Kölling, M., Bouimetarhan, I., Bowles, M.W. et al. Consistent CO2 release by pyrite oxidation on continental shelves prior to glacial terminations. Nat. Geosci. 12, 929–934 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0465-9

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