Publication Date:
2016-04-22
Description:
Over tens to hundreds of millions of years, Earth's climate has repeatedly swung from icehouse, with large ice sheets like today, to greenhouse, when even near-polar climates were temperate (1). The modern paradigm attributes these swings to a dynamic interplay of volcanism, which spews carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and the chemical weathering of rocks on land, which removes CO2 from the atmosphere (2). Documenting how these driving forces have varied through time has been a challenge. On page 444 of this issue, McKenzie et al. (3) argue that volcanic CO2 emissions have been the main driver of climate change over the past several hundred million years. Author: Lee Kump
Keywords:
Climate Change
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Geosciences
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
