Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian–Triassic mass extinction

Abstract

The Permian–Triassic mass extinction was marked by a massive release of carbon into the ocean-atmosphere system, evidenced by a sharp negative carbon isotope excursion. Large carbon emissions would have increased atmospheric pCO2 and caused global warming. However, the magnitude of pCO2 changes during the PTME has not yet been estimated. Here, we present a continuous pCO2 record across the PTME reconstructed from high-resolution δ13C of C3 plants from southwestern China. We show that pCO2 increased from 426 +133/−96 ppmv in the latest Permian to 2507 +4764/−1193 ppmv at the PTME within about 75 kyr, and that the reconstructed pCO2 significantly correlates with sea surface temperatures. Mass balance modelling suggests that volcanic CO2 is probably not the only trigger of the carbon cycle perturbation, and that large quantities of 13C-depleted carbon emission from organic matter and methane were likely required during complex interactions with the Siberian Traps volcanism.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Wu, Y Chu, D Tong, J Song, H Dal Corso, J Wignall, PB https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0074-9129 Song, H Du, Y Cui, Y
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: December 2021 Published (online): 9 April 2021 Accepted: 26 February 2021
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	19 May 2021 14:52
Last Modified:	19 May 2021 14:52
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-021-22298-7
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:174279

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Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian–Triassic mass extinction

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