Magmatic Triggering of Cenozoic Climate Changes

Descripción del proyecto

Descifrar los secretos de la Tierra

El ciclo geológico del carbono de la Tierra actúa como un termostato a largo plazo, controlando el clima y la evolución de la vida a través de las placas tectónicas. Sin embargo, sigue existiendo una importante laguna de conocimiento: la incertidumbre sobre las emisiones de CO2 de los arcos magmáticos continentales, que son una fuente natural clave de carbono en la atmósfera y los océanos. En este contexto, el proyecto MATRICs, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende colmar esta laguna reconstruyendo la historia de las emisiones magmáticas de CO2 del margen de placa convergente neotiano. Mediante el uso de inclusiones fundidas, análisis de oligoelementos y modelos numéricos avanzados, el equipo de MATRICs aportará información sobre el papel de estas emisiones en los cambios climáticos de principios del Cenozoico. La investigación mejorará nuestra comprensión de los impulsores naturales del clima, ofreciendo valiosas perspectivas para compararlos con las emisiones antropogénicas actuales.

Objetivo

By preventing all the Earth’s carbon to be released into the oceans and atmosphere or to be stored within rocks, the geological carbon cycle acts as a global long term thermostat, linking the evolution of climate and life to plate tectonics. The uncertainty regarding CO2 emissions from continental magmatic arcs, a primary natural input of carbon into the ocean and atmosphere, is currently the greatest limitation to our quantitative understanding of the geological carbon cycle. The high-gain target of MATRICs is to reconstruct the time history of magmatic CO2 emissions from the Neo-Tethyan convergent plate margin and its critical contribution to early Cenozoic climate changes. This ambitious goal will be achieved by iterative geologic data acquisition and state-of-the-art numerical modeling.

I propose to couple three established techniques to assess temporal changes in the source and amount of CO2 emissions from the Neo-Tethyan magmatic arc and assess their effects on early Cenozoic climate: (1) studies of melt inclusions, pockets of melts preserved within magmatic rocks, (2) analyses of trace elements concentrations (e.g. Hg, Te) within the sedimentary record, and (3) numerical petro-thermo-mechanical geodynamic and climate carbon cycle modeling. Undertaking this multi-disciplinary and ground-breaking project is now possible, owing to my success in using numerical modeling and diverse geological data to unravel the interactions between tectonics and climate accounting for magmatism.

Engaging in a high-gain win-win challenge, MATRICs will either overturn or finally validate untested paradigms about the tectonic forcing of Cenozoic climate. In either case, the knowledge produced about the geological carbon cycle will allow us to better assess the drivers of natural climate variability and, by comparison, the climatic consequences of current anthropic emissions.