Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse
Earth’s climate during the last 4.6 billion years has changed repeatedly between cold (icehouse) and warm (greenhouse) conditions. The hottest conditions (supergreenhouse) are widely assumed to have lacked an active cryosphere. Here we show that during the archetypal supergreenhouse Cretaceous Earth...
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2022
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ftunivsussex:oai:sro.sussex.ac.uk:109875 2023-07-30T04:01:45+02:00 Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro Wu, Chihua Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A Murton, Julian B Tang, Wenqiang Ma, Chao 2022-12-26 application/pdf http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/ http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/1/2022%20Cretaceous%20PF,%20NComs.pdf https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35676-6 en eng Springer Science and Business Media LLC http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/1/2022%20Cretaceous%20PF,%20NComs.pdf Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro, Wu, Chihua, Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A, Murton, Julian B, Tang, Wenqiang and Ma, Chao (2022) Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse. Nature Communications, 13. e7946 1-15. ISSN 2041-1723 cc_by_4 Article PeerReviewed 2022 ftunivsussex https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35676-6 2023-07-11T20:46:28Z Earth’s climate during the last 4.6 billion years has changed repeatedly between cold (icehouse) and warm (greenhouse) conditions. The hottest conditions (supergreenhouse) are widely assumed to have lacked an active cryosphere. Here we show that during the archetypal supergreenhouse Cretaceous Earth, an active cryosphere with permafrost existed in Chinese plateau deserts (astrochonological age ca. 132.49–132.17 Ma), and that a modern analogue for these plateau cryospheric conditions is the aeolian–permafrost system we report from the Qiongkuai Lebashi Lake area, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Significantly, Cretaceous plateau permafrost was coeval with largely marine cryospheric indicators in the Arctic and Australia, indicating a strong coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system. The Cretaceous permafrost contained a rich microbiome at subtropical palaeolatitude and 3–4 km palaeoaltitude, analogous to recent permafrost in the western Himalayas. A mindset of persistent ice-free greenhouse conditions during the Cretaceous has stifled consideration of permafrost thaw as a contributor of C and nutrients to the palaeo-oceans and palaeo-atmosphere. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Ice permafrost University of Sussex: Sussex Research Online Arctic Nature Communications 13 1 |
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University of Sussex: Sussex Research Online |
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ftunivsussex |
language |
English |
description |
Earth’s climate during the last 4.6 billion years has changed repeatedly between cold (icehouse) and warm (greenhouse) conditions. The hottest conditions (supergreenhouse) are widely assumed to have lacked an active cryosphere. Here we show that during the archetypal supergreenhouse Cretaceous Earth, an active cryosphere with permafrost existed in Chinese plateau deserts (astrochonological age ca. 132.49–132.17 Ma), and that a modern analogue for these plateau cryospheric conditions is the aeolian–permafrost system we report from the Qiongkuai Lebashi Lake area, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Significantly, Cretaceous plateau permafrost was coeval with largely marine cryospheric indicators in the Arctic and Australia, indicating a strong coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system. The Cretaceous permafrost contained a rich microbiome at subtropical palaeolatitude and 3–4 km palaeoaltitude, analogous to recent permafrost in the western Himalayas. A mindset of persistent ice-free greenhouse conditions during the Cretaceous has stifled consideration of permafrost thaw as a contributor of C and nutrients to the palaeo-oceans and palaeo-atmosphere. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro Wu, Chihua Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A Murton, Julian B Tang, Wenqiang Ma, Chao |
spellingShingle |
Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro Wu, Chihua Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A Murton, Julian B Tang, Wenqiang Ma, Chao Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
author_facet |
Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro Wu, Chihua Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A Murton, Julian B Tang, Wenqiang Ma, Chao |
author_sort |
Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro |
title |
Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
title_short |
Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
title_full |
Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
title_fullStr |
Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
title_full_unstemmed |
Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse |
title_sort |
permafrost in the cretaceous supergreenhouse |
publisher |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/ http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/1/2022%20Cretaceous%20PF,%20NComs.pdf https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35676-6 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Ice permafrost |
genre_facet |
Arctic Ice permafrost |
op_relation |
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109875/1/2022%20Cretaceous%20PF,%20NComs.pdf Rodríguez-López, Juan Pedro, Wu, Chihua, Vishnivetskaya, Tatiana A, Murton, Julian B, Tang, Wenqiang and Ma, Chao (2022) Permafrost in the Cretaceous supergreenhouse. Nature Communications, 13. e7946 1-15. ISSN 2041-1723 |
op_rights |
cc_by_4 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35676-6 |
container_title |
Nature Communications |
container_volume |
13 |
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1 |
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1772812518867075072 |