Exceptionally high biosphere productivity at the beginning of Marine Isotopic Stage 11.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32355168.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-15739-2 and PMC identifier 7192893.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Significant changes in atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> over glacial-interglacial cycles have mainly been attributed to the Southern Ocean through physical and biological processes. However, little is known about the contribution of global biosphere productivity, associated with important CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes. Here we present the first high resolution record of Δ<sup>17</sup>O of O<sub>2</sub> in the Antarctic EPICA Dome C ice core over Termination V and Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 11 and reconstruct the global oxygen biosphere productivity over the last 445 ka. Our data show that compared to the younger terminations, biosphere productivity at the end of Termination V is 10 to 30 % higher. Comparisons with local palaeo observations suggest that strong terrestrial productivity in a context of low eccentricity might explain this pattern. We propose that higher biosphere productivity could have maintained low atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> at the beginning of MIS 11, thus highlighting its control on the global climate during Termination V.