Long-term climate forcing by atmospheric oxygen concentrations
Change was in the air
The atmospheric fraction of molecular oxygen gas, O2, currently at 21%, is thought to have varied between around 35 and 15% over the past 500 million years. Because O2 is not a greenhouse gas, often this variability has not been considered in studies of climate change. Poulson and Wright show that indirect effects of oxygen abundance, caused by contributions to atmospheric pressure and mean molecular weight, can affect precipitation and atmospheric humidity (see the Perspective by Peppe and Royer). These effects may thus have produced significant changes in the strength of greenhouse forcing by water vapor, surface air temperatures, and the hydrological cycle in the geological past.
Abstract
The percentage of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere varied between 10% and 35% throughout the Phanerozoic. These changes have been linked to the evolution, radiation, and size of animals but have not been considered to affect climate. We conducted simulations showing that modulation of the partial pressure of oxygen (pO2), as a result of its contribution to atmospheric mass and density, influences the optical depth of the atmosphere. Under low pO2 and a reduced-density atmosphere, shortwave scattering by air molecules and clouds is less frequent, leading to a substantial increase in surface shortwave forcing. Through feedbacks involving latent heat fluxes to the atmosphere and marine stratus clouds, surface shortwave forcing drives increases in atmospheric water vapor and global precipitation, enhances greenhouse forcing, and raises global surface temperature. Our results implicate pO2 as an important factor in climate forcing throughout geologic time.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
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Figs. S1 to S7
Tables S1 to S3
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 348 | Issue 6240
12 June 2015
12 June 2015
Copyright
Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 2 September 2014
Accepted: 5 May 2015
Published in print: 12 June 2015
Acknowledgments
Supported by NSF Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program grant F035175 and NSF Marine Geology and Geophysics grant F033663. We thank R. Feng, R. Fiorella, I. Montañez, and three anonymous reviewers for discussion of and comments on this work. The model data are available at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/contributing.
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