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A lower limit to atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past 800,000 years

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 295–298 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations varied widely over the glacial cycles of the past 800,000 years. But despite this variability, Antarctic ice cores have shown that CO2 concentrations were very similar during all the coldest points of these cycles. Remarkably, the recurring minimum CO2 concentrations (190 ± 7 ppm) fall on the lower bound of any known in Earth history. Here we show that although the volume of terrestrial ice sheets was normally distributed over the past 800,000 years, as might be expected from the approximately normal distribution of the orbital forcing that drove the glacial cycles, Antarctic temperatures have a strong cold mode, whereas CO2 concentrations have both a cold mode and a central mode. Although multiple explanations are possible, the recurring CO2 minima and pronounced cold modes are consistent with a strong negative feedback to decreasing CO2 that resisted further cooling on timescales shorter than 10,000 years. We suggest that one possible negative feedback is CO2-limitation of photosynthesis, either directly or via CO2-limitation of N2 fixation, which could have inhibited further lowering of CO2 by reducing carbon storage.

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Figure 1: Glacial cycles over the past 800 kyr.
Figure 2: Frequency distributions of insolation, sea level, Antarctic temperature and CO2 over glacial cycles.
Figure 3: Schematic illustration of feedbacks acting on temperature and atmospheric CO2.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Jaccard, D. Hutchins and members of the CIFAR Earth System Evolution Program for helpful discussions. E. Wolff, C. Pelejero, E. Calvo and S. Hall provided constructive comments on the manuscript. Financial support was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the María de Maeztu Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2015-0552), and the Swiss National Science Foundation through an Early Postdoc.Mobility grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICREA, Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain

    E. D. Galbraith

  2. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) and Department of Mathematics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain

    E. D. Galbraith & S. Eggleston

  3. Department of Earth and Planetary Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2A7, Canada

    E. D. Galbraith

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E.D.G. initiated the study and wrote the first draft of the paper. S.E. contributed to the development of figures, analysis and revisions of the text.

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Correspondence to E. D. Galbraith.

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Galbraith, E., Eggleston, S. A lower limit to atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past 800,000 years. Nature Geosci 10, 295–298 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2914

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