Glacial onset predated Late Ordovician climate cooling

The Ordovician glaciation represents the acme of one of only three major icehouse periods in Earth's Phanerozoic history and is notorious for setting the scene for one of the big five mass extinction events. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that drove ice sheet growth remain poorly understood and t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Paleoceanography
Main Authors: Pohl, Alexandre, Donnadieu, Yannick, Le Hir, Guillaume, Ladant, Jean-Baptiste, Dumas, Christophe, Alvarez-Solas, Jorge, Vandenbroucke, Thijs
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Ordovician glaciation
Earth system model
pCO2
ANTARCTIC ICE-SHEET
ATMOSPHERIC CARBON-DIOXIDE
EARLY SILURIAN GLACIATION
SEA-LEVEL RISE
LAND PLANTS
CO2 LEVELS
MODEL
CYCLE
PALEOGEOGRAPHY
PERIOD
Antarctic
Antarc*
Ice Sheet
Sea ice
Online Access:https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8057556
http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8057556
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016PA002928
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8057556/file/8057571
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Summary:The Ordovician glaciation represents the acme of one of only three major icehouse periods in Earth's Phanerozoic history and is notorious for setting the scene for one of the big five mass extinction events. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that drove ice sheet growth remain poorly understood and the final extent of the ice sheet crudely constrained. Here using an Earth system model with an innovative coupling method between ocean, atmosphere, and land ice accounting for climate and ice sheet feedback processes, we report simulations portraying for the first time the detailed evolution of the Ordovician ice sheet. We show that the emergence of the ice sheet happened in two discrete phases. In a counterintuitive sequence of events, the continental ice sheet appeared suddenly in a warm climate. Only during the second act, and set against a background of decreasing atmospheric CO2, followed steeply dropping temperatures and extending sea ice. The comparison with abundant sedimentological, geochemical, and micropaleontological data suggests that glacial onset may have occurred as early as the Middle Ordovician Darriwilian, in agreement with recent studies reporting third-order glacioeustatic cycles during the same period. The second step in ice sheet growth, typified by a sudden drop in tropical sea surface temperatures by approximate to 8 degrees C and the further extension of a single, continental-scale ice sheet over Gondwana, marked the onset of the Hirnantian glacial maximum. By suggesting the presence of an ice sheet over Gondwana throughout most of the Middle and Late Ordovician, our models embrace the emerging paradigm of an early Paleozoic Ice Age.

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