Month: August 2018

In 2015, I was interviewed by Susan Kucera when she visited Bristol to show her beautiful film on climate change – Breath of Life.  Working with Jeff Bridges, she has created a powerful new film – Living in the Future’s Past – that features those interviews with me and many other scientists, psychologists, politicians and philosophers. My own contributions on climate change reflect on the history of our planet and how that provides perspective for our current unprecedented rate of climate change. To elaborate on that, I am posting some recent press releases on the research that informed my reflections (and yet to be published at the time of interview). In particular, in the movie I discuss our research a carbon dioxide increase (and associated global warming event) that occurred over 100 million years ago. It is an event that we consider fast geologically but happened 100s of times more slowly than the carbon dioxide we are adding today.

The research was led by Dr David Naafs, a Research Fellow with me in the Organic Geochemistry Unit; it was based on Dutch Rubicon Grant he was awarded in 2012.  But we need to acknowledge three others.  First, our colleague Dani Schmidt has been grappling with the topic of rapid geological carbon release events for years; it was her work with Andy Ridgwell that began to reveal that these geologically rapid events were not at all rapid by modern standards.  Second, the work would not have been possible without a fantastic geological section; the Cau section in Spain had been studied for years prior to this by several colleagues at the University of Jaen, including Jose Manuel Castro and Maria Luisa Quijano.  All of these brilliant scientists – and many others – have helped shape our understanding of the geological past.  And almost all come to the same conclusion: although geology is a vast and powerful force, rarely does it act with the terrible speed and efficiency with which we are extracting fossil fuels from the Earth and transforming our carbon cycle.

From our press release at the time:

University of Bristol Cabot Institute researchers and their colleagues today published research that further documents the unprecedented rate of environmental change occurring today, compared to that which occurred during natural events in Earth’s history.

The research, published online on the 4^th of January (2016) in Nature Geosciences (‘Gradual and sustained carbon dioxide release during Aptian Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a’), reconstructs the changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO₂) during a global environmental change event that occurred about 120 Million years ago. New geochemical data provide evidence that pCO₂ increased in response to volcanic outgassing and remained high for around 1.5-2 million years, until enhanced organic matter burial in an oxygen-poor ocean caused a return to original levels.

Lead author Dr David Naafs explained: ‘Past records of climate change must be well characterised if we want to understand how it affected or will affect ecosystems. It has been suggested that the event we studied is a suitable analogue to what is happening today due to human activity and that a rapid increase in pCO₂ caused ocean acidification and a biological crisis amongst a group of calcifying marine algae. Our work confirms that there was a large increase in pCO₂. The change, however, appears to have been far slower than that of today, taking place over hundreds of thousands of years, rather than the centuries over which human activity is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. So despite earlier claims, our research indicates that it is extremely unlikely that widespread surface ocean acidification occurred during this event.’

The observation that yet another putative ‘rapid’ geological event is occurring perhaps a thousand times slower than today and not associated with widespread surface ocean acidification has been the focus of much recent research at the University of Bristol. Co-author Professor Daniela Schmidt, who was also a Lead Author on the IPCC WGII report on Ocean systems, emphasised that today’s finding builds on one of the IPCC’s key conclusions: that the rate of environmental change occurring today is largely unprecedented in Earth history.  She said, ‘This is another example that the current rate of environmental change has few if any precedents in Earth history, and this has big implications for thinking about both past and future change.’

The research was possible due to the exceptional Spanish section that the team analysed. Co-author Professor José Manuel Castro of the University of Jaen adds, ‘The sediments at Cau accumulated very rapidly resulting in an expanded section. This allowed the high resolution multidisciplinary analysis that are the basis for this important study.’

Senior Author and Director of the University’s Cabot Institute, Professor Rich Pancost, added,  ‘We often use the geological record to help us test or expand our understanding of climate change, for example, determining the sensitivity of Earth’s temperature to higher CO₂ levels. But testing the risks associated with the pace of modern environmental change is proving problematic, due to a lack of similar rapid changes in the geological past. Consequently, these risks, in this case to the marine ecosystems on which so many of us depend, remain associated with profound uncertainty. Decreasing CO₂ emissions, as recently agreed in Paris, will be necessary to avoid these risks.’

This research was published in Nature Geosciences.

See also the News and Views perspective.

The research was funded by a NWO (Netherlands Funding Council) Rubicon Grant to David Naafs and NERC funding to Rich Pancost.

In 2015, I was interviewed by Susan Kucera when she visited Bristol to show her beautiful film on climate change – Breath of Life.  Working with Jeff Bridges, she has created a powerful new film – Living in the Future’s Past – that features those interviews with me and many other scientists, psychologists, politicians and philosophers. My own contributions on climate change reflect on the history of our planet and how that provides perspective for our current unprecedented rate of climate change. To elaborate on that, I am posting some recent press releases on the research that informed my reflections (and yet to be published at the time of interview).

In particular, I discuss work in collaboration with colleagues at Southampton, showing that the Earth’s current pCO2 level of 400 ppm is higher than it has been for nearly 3 million years (this work also refers to our research on the Pliocene, which I have also written about here). 

A multinational research team, led by scientists at the University of Southampton and the University of Bristol Cabot Institute, has developed new records of past CO₂ levels.  These reveal that the CO₂ content of the Earth’s atmosphere between 2.8 to 3.3 million years ago, were higher than that of the pre-industrial Earth and likely higher than at any other point over the past two million years – but similar to values reached in the past decade.

The new records are based on geochemical analyses of marine sediments. These have been measured using techniques developed at Bristol and Southampton over the past decade. The Bristol team includes Professor Richard Pancost from the University of Bristol, Director of the Cabot Institute and the Primary Investigator of the wider grant under which this research was conducted, as well as Dr Marcus Badger, Professor Dan Lunt and Professor Daniela Schmidt.  Professor Pancost explains: “We cannot directly measure the CO₂ levels on Earth prior to about 1 million years ago, and so we instead use proxies.  In the case of our project, funded by the NERC, we used a combination of approaches based on the chemical signatures of organisms preserved in sediments at the bottom of the sea.”

By studying the relationship between CO₂ levels and climate change during a warmer period in Earth’s history, the team have been able to estimate how the climate will respond to increasing levels of carbon dioxide, a parameter known as ‘climate sensitivity’.  The findings, which have been published in Nature, fall in line with estimates in the most recent IPCC report.  “Today the Earth is still adjusting to the recent rapid rise of CO₂ caused by human activities, whereas the longer-term Pliocene records document the full response of CO₂-related warming,” says Southampton’s Dr Gavin Foster, co-lead author of the study.  “Our estimates of climate sensitivity lie well within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C warming per CO₂ doubling summarised in the latest IPCC report. ”

Professor Dan Lunt, also of the University of Bristol and the Cabot Institute adds: “We compared the temperature response to CO₂ change in the warm Pliocene to that during colder times, like the glacial cycles of the last 800 thousand years.  The temperature response was around half that of the colder period, but that difference can be largely resolved by considering the growth and retreat of large continental ice sheets during more recent glacial cycles. These ice sheets reflect a lot of sunlight and their growth consequently amplifies the impact of CO₂ changes, but they were smaller and less variable during the warm Pliocene.”

“Our new records also reveal an important change at around 2.8 million years ago, when levels dropped to values of about 280 ppm, similar to those seen before the industrial revolution,” says lead author of the study Dr Miguel Martinez-Boti, also from Southampton. “This appears to have caused a dramatic global cooling that initiated the ice-age cycles that have dominated Earth’s climate ever since.”

Professor Pancost added: “When we account for the influence of the ice sheets, we can confirm that the Earth’s climate changed with a similar sensitivity to overall forcing during both warmer and colder climates. During the Pliocene the Earth was warmer by around 2°C than it is today and atmospheric CO₂ levels were around 350-400 parts per million (ppm), similar to the levels reached in recent years.  This suggests that in the long term, we have already committed to 2 °C warming, and future CO₂ increases will only add to that.”

NOTE: Subsequent to this work, we pushed this methodology further back into Earth history, into the Eocene (30 to 50 million years ago).  This was probably the last time the Earth had pCO2 levels similar to what we might reach by the end of the century (>800 ppm).  

Plio-Pleistocene climate sensitivities evaluated using high-resolution CO₂ records by M.A. Martínez-Botí, G.L. Foster, T. B. Chalk, E.J. Rohling, P.F. Sexton, D.J. Lunt, R.D. Pancost, M.P.S. Badger & D.N. Schmidt DOI: 10.1038/nature14145

This work was funded by an NERC grant to Pancost (PI), G Foster, D Schmidt and D Lunt.

Our current global warming target and the trajectory it places us on, towards a future ‘Hothouse Earth’, has been the subject of much recent discussion, stimulated by a paper by Will Steffen and colleagues.  In many respects, the key contribution of this paper and similar work is to extend the temporal framing of our climate discussions, beyond 2100 for several centuries or more.  Analogously, it is useful to extend our perspective backwards to similar time periods, to reflect on the last time Earth experienced such a Hothouse state and what it means.

The Steffen et al paper allows for a variety of framings, all related to the range of natural physical, biological and chemical feedbacks that will amplify or mitigate the human intervention in climate.  [Note: the authors frame their paper around the concept of a limited number of steady state scenarios/temperatures for the Earth.  They then argue that aiming for 2C, potentially an unstable state, could trigger feedbacks tipping the world towards the 4C warmer Hothouse.  I find that to be somewhat simplistic given the diversity of climate states that have existed, if even transiently, over the past 15 million years, but that is a discussion for another day.] From my perspective, the most useful framing – and one that remains true to the spirit of the paper is this: We have set a global warming limit of 2C by 2100, with an associated carbon budget. What feedback processes will that carbon budget and warming actually unleash over the coming century,  how much additional warming will they add, and when?

That is a challenging set of questions that comes with a host of caveats, most related to the profound uncertainty in the interlinked biogeochemical processes that underpin climate feedbacks. For example, as global warming thaws the permafrost, will it release methane (with a high global warming potential than carbon dioxide)? Will the thawed organic matter oxidise to carbon dioxide or will it be washed and buried in the ocean? And will the increased growth of plants under warmer conditions lead instead to the sequestration of carbon dioxide? The authors refer to previous studies that suggest a permafrost feedback yielding an additional 0.1C warming by the end of the century; but there is great uncertainty in both the magnitude of that impact and its timing.

And timing is the great question at the heart of this perspective piece.  I welcome it, because too often our perspective is fixed on the arbitrary date of 2100, knowing full well that the Earth will continue to warm and ice continue to melt long after that date.  In this sense, Steffen et al is not a contradiction to what has been reported from the IPCC but an expansion on it.

Classically, we discuss these issues in terms of fast and slow feedbacks, but in fact there is a continuum between near instantaneous feedbacks and those that act over hundreds, thousands or even millions of years.  A warmer atmosphere will almost immediately hold more water vapour, providing a rapid positive feedback on warming – and one that is included in all of those IPCC projections.  More slowly, soil carbon, including permafrost, will begin to oxidise, with microbial activity stimulated and accelerated under warmer conditions – a feedback that is only just now being included in Earth system models.  And longer term, all manner of processes will come into play – and eventually, they will include the negative feedbacks that have helped regulate Earth’s climate for the past 4 billion years.

There is enough uncertainty in these processes to express caution in some of the press’s more exuberant reporting of this topic.  But lessons from the past certainly underscore the concerns articulated by Steffen et al.  We think that the last time Earth had 410 ppm CO2, a level similar to what you are breathing right now, was the Pliocene about 3 million years ago.  This was a world that was 1 to 2C warmer than today (i.e. 2 to 3C warmer than the pre-industrial Earth) and with sea levels about 10 m higher.  This suggests that we are already locked into a world that far exceeds the ambitions and targets of the Paris Agreement.  This is not certain as we live on a different planet and one where the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica might not only be victims of climate change but climate stabilisers through ice-sheet hysteresis. And even if a Pliocene future is fixed, it might take centuries for that warming and sea level change to be realised.

But that analogue does suggest caution, as advocated by the Hothouse Earth authors.

It also prompts us to ask what the Earth was like the last time its atmosphere held about 500 ppm CO2, similar to the level needed to achieve the Paris Agreement to limit end-of-century warming below 2C.  A useful analogue for those greenhouse gas levels is the Middle Miocene Climate Optimum, which occurred from 17 to 14.7 million years ago.

Figure showing changes in ocean temperature (based on oxygen isotopic compositions of benthic foraminifera) and pCO2 over the past 60 million years (from Palaeo-CO2).  Solid symbols are from the d11B isotope proxy and muted symbols are from the alkenone-based algal carbon isotope fractional proxy. Note the spike in pCO2 associated with the MMCO at about 15 million years ago.

As one would expect for a world with markedly higher carbon dioxide levels, the Miocene was hotter than the climate of today.  And consistent with many of Steffen et al.’s arguments, it was about 4C hotter rather than a mere 2C, likely due to the range of carbon cycle and ice-albedo feedbacks they describe.  But such warmth was not uniform – globally warmer temperatures of 4C manifest as far hotter temperatures in some parts of the world and only slightly warmer temperatures elsewhere. Pollen and microbial molecular fossils from the North Sea, for example, indicate that Northern Europe experienced sub-tropical climates.

But what were the impacts of this warmth?  What is a 4C warmer world like?  To understand that, we also need to understand the other ways in which the Miocene world differed from ours, not just due to carbon dioxide concentrations but also the ongoing movement of the continents and the continuing evolution of life.  In both respects, the Miocene was broadly similar to today.  The continents were in similar positions, and the geography of the Miocene is one we would recognise. But there were subtle differences, including the ongoing uplift of the Himalayas and the yet-to-be-closed gateway between North and South America, and these subtle differences could have had major impacts on Asian climate and the North Atlantic circulation, respectively.

Similarly, the major animal groups had evolved by this point, and mammals had firmly established their dominance in a world separated by 50 million years from the dinosaurs.  Remnant groups from earlier times (hell pigs!) still terrorised the landscape, but many of the groups were the same or closely related to those we would recognise today.  And although hominins would not appear until the end of the Miocene, the apes had become well established, represented by as many as a 100 species. In the oceans, the differences were perhaps more apparent, the seas thriving with the greatest diversity of cetaceans in the history of our planet and associated with them the gigantic macro-predators such as Charcharadon megalodon (The Meg^TM).

Smithsonian mural showing Miocene Fauna and landscape.

But it is the plants that exhibit the most pronounced differences between modern and Miocene life. Grasses had only recent proliferated across the planet at the time of the MMCO, and the C4 plants had yet to expand to their current dominance. And in this regard, the long-term evolution of Earth’s climate likely played a crucial role.  There are about 8100 species of C4 plants (although this comprises only 3% of the plant species known to us) and most of these are grasses with other notable species being maize and sugar cane. They are distinguished from the dominant C3 plants, which comprise almost all other species, by virtue of their carbon dioxide assimilation biochemistry (the Hatch-Slack mechanism) and their leaf cellular physiology (the Kranz leaf anatomy).  It is a collective package that is exceptionally well adapted to low carbon dioxide conditions, and their global expansion about 7 million years ago was almost certainly related to the long-term decline in carbon dioxide from the high levels of the Middle Miocene. Although C4 plants only represent a small proportion of modern plant species, the Miocene world, bereft of them, would have looked far different than today – lacking nearly half of our modern grass species and by extension clear analogues to the vast African savannahs.

Aside from these, the most profound differences between the Miocene world and that of today would have been the direct impacts of higher global temperatures.  There is strong evidence that the Greenland ice sheet was far reduced in size compared to that of today, and its extent and even whether or not it was a persistent ice sheet or an ephemeral one remains the subject of debate. Similarly, West Antarctica was likely devoid of permanent ice, and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet was probably smaller – perhaps far smaller – than it is today.  And collectively, these smaller ice sheets were associated with a sea level that was about 40 m higher than that of today.

The hot Miocene world would have been different in other ways, including the hydrological cycle.  Although less studied than for other ancient intervals, it is almost certain that elevated warmth – and markedly smaller equator-to-pole temperature differences – would have impacted the global distribution of water.  More water was evidently exported to the high latitudes, resulting in a warmer and vegetated Antarctica where the ice had retreated. It was also likely associated with far more extreme rainfall events, with the hot air able to hold greater quantities of water.  More work is needed, but it is tempting to imagine the impact of these hot temperatures and extreme rainfall events.  They would have eroded the soil and flushed nutrients to the sea, perhaps bringing about the spread of anoxic dead zones, similar to the Oceanic Anoxic Events of the Mesozoic or the dead zones of modern oceans caused by agricultural run-off. Indeed, the Miocene is characterised by the deposition of some very organic-rich rocks, including the North Pacific Monterey Formation, speaking to the occurrence of reduced oxygen levels in parts of these ancient oceans.

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It is unclear if our ambitions to limit global warming to 2C by the end of this century really have put us on a trajectory for 4C. It is unclear if we are destined to return to the Miocene.

But if so, the Miocene world is one both similar to but markedly distinct from our own – a world of hotter temperatures, extremes of climate, fewer grasslands, Antarctic vegetation, Arctic forests and far higher sea levels. Crucially, it is not the world for which our current society, its roads, cities, power plants, dams, borders, farmlands and treaties, has been designed.

Moreover, the MMCO Earth is a world that slowly evolved from an even warmer one over millions of years*; and that then evolved over further millions of years to the one in which we now inhabit. It is not a world that formed in a hundred or even a thousand years.  And that leaves us three final lessons from the past.  First, we do not know how the life of this planet, from coral reefs to the great savannahs, will respond to such geologically rapid change.  Second, we do not know how we will respond to such rapid change; if we must adapt, we must learn how to do so creatively, flexibly and equitably.  And third, it is probably not too late to prevent such a future from materialising, but even if it is, we still must act to slow down that rate of change to which we must adapt.

And we still must act to ensure that our future world is only 4C hotter and analogous to the Miocene; if we fail to act, the world will be even hotter, and we will have to extend our geological search 10s of millions of years further into the past, back to the Eocene, to find an even hotter and extreme analogue for our future Hothouse World.

*The final jump into the MMCO appears to have been somewhat more sudden, but still spanned around two-hundred thousand years.  A fast event geologically but not on the timescales of human history.