Farnsworth, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-5585-5338, Lo, Y.T.E. orcid.org/0000-0002-7389-7272, Valdes, P.J. orcid.org/0000-0002-1902-3283 et al. (5 more authors) (2023) Climate extremes likely to drive land mammal extinction during next supercontinent assembly. Nature Geoscience, 16 (10). pp. 901-908. ISSN 1752-0894
Abstract
Mammals have dominated Earth for approximately 55 Myr thanks to their adaptations and resilience to warming and cooling during the Cenozoic. All life will eventually perish in a runaway greenhouse once absorbed solar radiation exceeds the emission of thermal radiation in several billions of years. However, conditions rendering the Earth naturally inhospitable to mammals may develop sooner because of long-term processes linked to plate tectonics (short-term perturbations are not considered here). In ~250 Myr, all continents will converge to form Earth’s next supercontinent, Pangea Ultima. A natural consequence of the creation and decay of Pangea Ultima will be extremes in due to changes in volcanic rifting and outgassing. Here we show that increased, solar energy (F⨀; approximately +2.5% W m−2 greater than today) and continentality (larger range in temperatures away from the ocean) lead to increasing warming hostile to mammalian life. We assess their impact on mammalian physiological limits (dry bulb, wet bulb and Humidex heat stress indicators) as well as a planetary habitability index. Given mammals’ continued survival, predicted background levels of 410–816 ppm combined with increased F⨀ will probably lead to a climate tipping point and their mass extinction. The results also highlight how global landmass configuration, and F⨀ play a critical role in planetary habitability.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023 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: |
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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: | 12 Jan 2024 17:00 |
Last Modified: | 12 Jan 2024 17:00 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01259-3 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41561-023-01259-3 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:204974 |