Historical Global Carbon Cycle Needs A Rethink
Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - 20:10
in Earth & Climate
A recent study of the global carbon cycle offers a new perspective of Earth's climate records through time. One of the current methods for interpreting ancient changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans may need to be re-evaluated. A measurement of the abundance of carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes in both the organic matter and carbonate sediments found in a nearly 700-meter marine sediment core from the Great Bahama Bank. The analyses showed a change to lower amounts of the rare isotope of carbon (carbon-13) in both the organic and inorganic materials as a result of several periods of sub-aerial exposure during the Pleistocene ice ages, which took place over the past two million years. read more