As we struggle to cope with the ongoing buildup of CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels, can we acquire guidance from the geologic record? Although our ability to reconstruct past atmospheric CO2 content reliably is currently confined to the last 800 thousand years, we do have compelling evidence that this green-house gas played a key role throughout the Earth’s history. It certainly compensated for the young Sun’s lower luminosity. There is no question that it bailed us out of two snowball episodes or that it led to a brief 5 °C warming at the onset of the Eocene. Less certain is that diminishing atmospheric CO2 content was responsible for the global cooling that began 50 million years ago when the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia. Finally, it colluded with changing seasonality, ocean circulation re-organisation and iron fertilisation to generate the 100 thousand year glacial cycles that dominated the last half-million years.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Research Article|
October 01, 2018
CO2: Earth’s Climate Driver
Wally Broecker
Publisher: European Association of Geochemistry
First Online:
30 Nov 2018
Online ISSN: 2224-2759
Print ISSN: 2223-7755
© 2018 European Association of Geochemistry, EAG. All rights reserved.
European Association of Geochemistry
Geochemical Perspectives (2018) 7 (2): 117.
Article history
First Online:
30 Nov 2018
Citation
Wally Broecker; CO2: Earth’s Climate Driver. Geochemical Perspectives 2018;; 7 (2): 117. doi:
Download citation file:
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Email alerts
Index Terms/Descriptors
- C-13/C-12
- carbon
- carbon dioxide
- Cenozoic
- climate change
- climate forcing
- geochemistry
- glaciation
- hydrologic cycle
- hydrology
- isotope ratios
- isotopes
- O-18/O-16
- oxygen
- paleoclimatology
- Phanerozoic
- plate tectonics
- Precambrian
- Quaternary
- reconstruction
- snowball Earth
- solar cycles
- stable isotopes
- volcanism
Citing articles via
Related Articles
Section 1. Introduction
Geochemical Perspectives
The autocyclic nature of glaciations
Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France
Related Book Content
Impact of a northern-hemispherical cryosphere on late Pliensbachian–early Toarcian climate and environment evolution
Carbon Cycle and Ecosystem Response to the Jenkyns Event in the Early Toarcian (Jurassic)
High-resolution multiproxy cyclostratigraphic analysis of environmental and climatic events across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in the classic pelagic succession of Gubbio (Italy)
The Stratigraphic Record of Gubbio: Integrated Stratigraphy of the Late Cretaceous–Paleogene Umbria-Marche Pelagic Basin
Stable isotope geochemistry of pedogenic carbonates in calcareous materials, Iran: a review and synthesis
Stable Isotope Studies of the Water Cycle and Terrestrial Environments
Effects of Deccan volcanism on paleoenvironment and planktic foraminifera: A global survey
Volcanism, Impacts, and Mass Extinctions: Causes and Effects