Understanding Oscillations of the Geological Carbon Cycle

Abstract:

The geological cycling of carbon ties together the sedimentary reservoirs with Earth's biosphere and climate. Perturbations to this coupled system are recorded in the carbon isotopic composition of marine limestones (δ¹³C_carb). In the past decade numerous intervals of large-amplitude oscillations in δ¹³C_carbhave been identified, with a variety of explanations proposed for individual events. Yet, when data spanning the past ~1 Ga are viewed as a whole, it is clear that large-scale oscillations are a common feature of the carbon isotopic record. The ubiquity of oscillations suggests that they may share a single origin rather than having many disparate causes.

Here we present a simple two-box model of the geological carbon cycle exhibiting such oscillations: the Carbon-Cycle Oscillator. Analogous to a damped mass-spring system, the burial fluxes of carbonate and phosphate in the model act like friction, whereas P supply and Corg burial act like the restoring force of the spring. When the sensitivities of P supply and Corg burial to the sizes of the C and P reservoirs, respectively, increase above a critical threshold, the model exhibits oscillations upon perturbation.

We suggest that intervals with large oscillations in bulk ocean-atmosphere δ¹³C are characterized by a greater sensitivity of the C:P burial-ratio and ALK:P weathering-ratio to the state of the ocean-atmosphere carbon pool. In addition, moderating of the slope of that dependence in general can account for the observed decrease in the amplitude of oscillations over the past billion years. We hypothesize that factors with a unidirectional trajectory during Earth history (e.g. increased oxygenation of the deep ocean, and evolution of pelagic calcifiers) led to a decrease in the Earth System's gain and increase in its resilience over geologic time, even in the face of continuing perturbations from the solid Earth and extraterrestrial realms.