How did ancient extinction events contribute to global climate change? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated a connection between the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (aka PTME or “Great Dying”) and increased global climate change, specifically increased greenhouse conditions for five million years after the event. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the Earth’s climate history and how this has contributed to life on our planet.
For the study, the researchers used a combination of fossil record examination and computer models to simulate the amount of loss to plant life that occurred during the PTME. In the end, the researchers found that the amount of tree loss greatly contributed to increased levels of carbon dioxide due to a lack of carbon storage, resulting in increased levels of carbon dioxide for millions of years beyond the PTME. They note their results indicate that plant life loss are significant contributors to increased climate change.
“There is a warning here about the importance of Earth’s present day tropical forests,” said Dr. Benjamin Mills, who is a professor of Earth system evolution at the University of Leeds and a co-author on the study. “If rapid warming causes them to collapse in a similar manner, then we should not expect our climate to cool to preindustrial levels even if we stop emitting CO2. Indeed, warming could continue to accelerate in this case even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth’s past.”
This study demonstrates how massive climate swings do not need an extinction-level event to trigger them, potentially giving humanity a warning about the future of Earth’s climate and what we can do to mitigate the threat.
What new connections between extinction events and climate change will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature Communications, EurekAlert!