Cataclysmic Mass Extinction Event Scorched Earth and Wiped Out Most Existent Lifeforms
Rewritten Article:
The catastrophic event known as "The Great Dying," approximately 252 million years ago, was caused by volcanic eruptions in present-day Siberia, spewing an estimated 100 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment over a million years. This disaster, also known as the "Permian-Triassic mass extinction," annihilated most life forms on Earth. New research reveals that this catastrophe not only led to the extermination of numerous species but also drastically altered Earth's ecosystems.
A global team of scientists employed climate models and plant fossils to link the Great Dying with a 18-degree Fahrenheit rise (10 degrees Celsius) in the average global temperatures. As detailed in a latest study published on Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science, this research sheds light on the potential consequences of mankind's carbon dioxide emissions on the planet.
The researchers focused on five time periods spanning parts of the Permian and Triassic periods: the Permian's Wuchiapingian and Changhsingian, as well as the Triassic's Induan, Olenekian and Anisian. Given that the Great Dying marks the transition from the Permian to the Triassic period, it's often referred to as the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, or the Permian-Triassic Boundary. Notably, the Triassic period is recognized for the rise of the dinosaurs, whose ancestors survived the Great Dying.
"Life on Earth had to adapt to repeated climate and carbon cycle changes for several million years post the Permian-Triassic Boundary," said Maura Brunetti, lead author and researcher at the University of Geneva's Group of Applied Physics Institute for Environmental Sciences, in a Frontiers statement.
Brunetti and her peers estimated the changes within six distinct ecological habitats across the aforementioned time periods by studying plant fossils and computer model simulations under diverse temperature and CO2 level scenarios, and then cross-referencing the findings. The habitats under scrutiny encompassed tropical everwet biomes, seasonal tropical or temperate biomes, and desert biomes.
Broadly speaking, their findings showed that the Permian period was rather cold, the Induan era was ambiguous (requiring further research), and the Olenekian and Anisian periods were significantly warmer. "This shift from a cold climate to a warmer state is marked by a rise of approximately 100 degrees Celsius in the mean global surface air temperature," Brunetti explained. This aligns with the considerable amounts of CO2 the volcanic eruptions released into the Earth's atmosphere-the higher the CO2 levels, the warmer and wetter the planet became.
Expectedly, the researchers found that biomes shifted significantly during this transition. "Tropical everwet and summerwet biomes emerged in the tropics, replacing predominantly desertic landscapes," Brunetti continued. "Meanwhile, the warm-cool temperate biome shifted toward polar regions, resulting in the disappearance of tundra ecosystems." Essentially, deserts near the equator turned tropical, while cold tundra landscapes closer to the pole were replaced by more temperate forests.
This "vegetation shift can be linked to tipping points," or irreversible shifts, between stable climate periods, creating a possible framework to "understand tipping behavior in the climate system in response to the present-day CO2 increase," Brunetti added. "If this increase continues at the current rate, we will reach the CO2 emission levels that caused the Permian-Triassic mass extinction in around 2,700 years-a faster timescale than the Permian-Triassic Boundary emissions."
Although the researchers advise that more research is necessary to confirm their findings, this study offers a stark warning: continued human emissions of CO2 could lead to an even more dramatic transformation of the planet compared to the Great Dying.
- The catastrophic event, the Great Dying, approximately 252 million years ago, was caused by volcanic eruptions in present-day Siberia, releasing an estimated 100 trillion metric tons of CO2, a significant contributor to the rise in global temperatures.
- The researchers' findings suggest that during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, a shift from a cold climate to a warmer state occurred, with a rise of approximately 100 degrees Celsius in the mean global surface air temperature.
- In the Anisian period, a warm phase of the Triassic, the warm-cool temperate biome shifted toward polar regions, resulting in the disappearance of tundra ecosystems, similar to what could potentially happen with the ongoing increase in CO2 emissions.
- If the current rate of CO2 emissions continues, the researchers predict that we will reach the CO2 emission levels that caused the Permian-Triassic mass extinction in around 2,700 years, hinting at an irreversible transformation of the planet similar to or even more dramatic than the Great Dying.