Magmatic Triggering of Cenozoic Climate Changes

Introduction

By preventing all the Earth's carbon from being released into the oceans and atmosphere or being stored within rocks, the geological carbon cycle acts as a global long-term thermostat. This cycle links 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.

Project Goals

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 through:

1. Iterative geologic data acquisition
2. State-of-the-art numerical modeling

Methodology

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 evaluate their effects on early Cenozoic climate:

1. Studies of melt inclusions, which are pockets of melts preserved within magmatic rocks
2. Analyses of trace element concentrations (e.g., Hg, Te) within the sedimentary record
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.

Expected Outcomes

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.