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Evolution of Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt

Nature volume 605, pages 629–639 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Concealed deep beneath the oceans is a carbon conveyor belt, propelled by plate tectonics. Our understanding of its modern functioning is underpinned by direct observations, but its variability through time has been poorly quantified. Here we reconstruct oceanic plate carbon reservoirs and track the fate of subducted carbon using thermodynamic modelling. In the Mesozoic era, 250 to 66 million years ago, plate tectonic processes had a pivotal role in driving climate change. Triassic–Jurassic period cooling correlates with a reduction in solid Earth outgassing, whereas Cretaceous period greenhouse conditions can be linked to a doubling in outgassing, driven by high-speed plate tectonics. The associated ‘carbon subduction superflux’ into the subcontinental mantle may have sparked North American diamond formation. In the Cenozoic era, continental collisions slowed seafloor spreading, reducing tectonically driven outgassing, while deep-sea carbonate sediments emerged as the Earth’s largest carbon sink. Subduction and devolatilization of this reservoir beneath volcanic arcs led to a Cenozoic increase in carbon outgassing, surpassing mid-ocean ridges as the dominant source of carbon emissions 20 million years ago. An increase in solid Earth carbon emissions during Cenozoic cooling requires an increase in continental silicate weathering flux to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide, challenging previous views and providing boundary conditions for future carbon cycle models.

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Fig. 1: Key global plate tectonic parameters driving the oceanic carbon conveyor belt.
Fig. 2: Carbon area density in the oceanic lithosphere through time.
Fig. 3: Carbon flux into oceanic plate reservoirs and subduction flux.
Fig. 4: Total carbon subducted into the mantle since 250 Ma.
Fig. 5: CO2 in subducting plate as a function of pressure and temperature from thermodynamic modelling.
Fig. 6: Comparison of major carbon fluxes with palaeoclimate proxies and continental arc length.

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Acknowledgements

R.D.M. and S.Z. were supported by Australian Research Council grant IH130200012. S.Z. was also funded by a University of Sydney Robinson Fellowship, and Alfred P. Sloan grants G-2017-9997 and G-2018-11296. A.D. was supported by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT190100829. C.M.G. and W.G. were funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems (CE110001017). C.M.G. also received funding from ARC Discovery Project DP190100216. PyGPlates and GPlates development is funded by the AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure System (NCRIS) programme. We thank R. Hazen, M. Edmonds and the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) Synthesis Group for discussions, which inspired this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EarthByte Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    R. Dietmar Müller, Ben Mather, Adriana Dutkiewicz & Sabin Zahirovic

  2. School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland

    Tobias Keller

  3. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Andrew Merdith

  4. Centre for Exploration Targeting, School of Earth Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

    Christopher M. Gonzalez & Weronika Gorczyk

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Contributions

R.D.M. conceived the work, and led the interpretation and writing of the manuscript. B.M. designed the carbon flux computation workflows and generated figures and videos using Jupyter notebooks. A.D. drafted the figures and contributed to the interpretation of data and writing of the manuscript. C.M.G. contributed to writing, thermodynamic modelling and providing code to calculate slab temperatures at depth. W.G. and A.M. contributed to writing. S.Z. contributed to writing of the manuscript, as well as computing seafloor age grids and guidance on processing the plate reconstruction models. T.K. oversaw the computation of carbon fluxes out of mid-ocean ridges and into the mantle lithosphere and contributed to writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. Dietmar Müller.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature thanks Yves Godderis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains the Supplementary Methods, including additional information about the methodology, model uncertainties and workflows, Supplementary Fig. 1 and References.

Supplementary Data 1

Excel spreadsheet with key inputs and outputs of our model. In terms of input, the variables listed include all relevant plate tectonic parameters through time, and the outputs include all modelled carbon reservoir fluxes discussed in the paper.

Supplementary Video 1

Spreading rates and orthogonal convergence rates through time.

Supplementary Video 2

Carbon area density in oceanic mantle lithosphere through time.

Supplementary Video 3

Carbon area density in oceanic crust through time.

Supplementary Video 4

Carbonate carbon area density in deep sea sediments through time.

Supplementary Video 5

Carbon area density in oceanic lithosphere serpentinites through time.

Supplementary Video 6

Total carbon area density in oceanic plates through time.

Supplementary Video 7

Cumulative carbon area density in the mantle, in a mantle reference frame, due to oceanic crustal carbon subduction.

Supplementary Video 8

Cumulative carbon area density in the mantle, in a mantle reference frame, due to oceanic lithospheric mantle carbon subduction.

Supplementary Video 9

Cumulative carbon area density in the mantle, in a mantle reference frame, due to oceanic sedimentary carbon subduction.

Supplementary Video 10

Cumulative carbon area density in the mantle, in a mantle reference frame, due to subduction of oceanic serpentinized lithospheric mantle carbon.

Supplementary Video 11

Cumulative carbon area density in the mantle, in a mantle reference frame, due to total oceanic plate carbon subduction.

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Müller, R.D., Mather, B., Dutkiewicz, A. et al. Evolution of Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt. Nature 605, 629–639 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04420-x

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