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Gone With the Wind

News - November 19, 1999 


 NSF PR 99-69
 Media contacts:
               Cheryl Dybas (NSF)
                                  (703) 306-1070
                                                    cdybas@nsf.gov
  
               Sandra Lanman, Rutgers
               University
                                  (732) 932-7084, ext. 621
                                                    slanman@ur.rutgers.edu
 Program contact:
               J. Paul Dauphin
                                  (703) 306-1581
                                                    jdauphin@nsf.gov




 Geologists Pinpoint Source of Major Global Warming Event More
 Than 55 Million Years Ago

 For the first time, a team of scientists has identified the possible
methane release site and critical
 sequence of events that precipitated Earth's bout with global warming, and
the extinction of many
 deep-sea species and appearance of new mammalian orders, more than 55
million years ago.

 The research project is part of the international Ocean Drilling Program,
which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a consortium of
international partners.

 In an article to be published this week in the journal Science, geologists
Miriam Katz and 
 Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, provide
support for a link
 between the mass extinction millions of years ago and the massive release
of methane and carbon
 dioxide into the earth's oceans and atmosphere, which is not unlike the
present input of fossil fuels
 into the environment. "We haven't studied these major carbon influxes
before because we didn't
 know about them," says NSF's Paul Dauphin, associate program director for
ODP.

 In what is known as the latest Paleocene thermal maximum (LPTM), Earth's
climate and oceans
 warmed significantly about 55.5 million years ago. Numerous mammalian
orders appeared while
 many deep-sea species became extinct as water temperatures soared by 4 to
8 degrees Celsius.
 Since the 1980s, scientists have tried to explain the rapid climate
warming apparent in
 geochemical records from around the world.

 "One approach to unraveling the possibilities of future climate change is
to study analogs from the
 Earth's past," says Katz. "We have examined clues in the geologic record
of an ancient massive
 release of carbon into the Earth's oceans and atmosphere." The clues came
from analyzing certain
 geochemical and faunal changes in a group of microfossils known as
foraminifera - essentially
 amoebas with shells - in order to reconstruct ancient oceanographic and
climatic conditions.

 Working as part of an international scientific team onboard the Ocean
Drilling Program's vessel
 the JOIDES (Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep-Earth Sampling)
Resolution, the
 researchers recovered ocean sediments from the Blake Nose, 400 kilometers
(250 miles) east of
 Tallahassee, Florida. Katz and her co-authors have pinpointed this region
as the first location to
 be identified as a possible LPTM methane release site, where methane
appears to have escaped
 from a pressure zone created by an underlying ancient reef.

 Katz says "the triggering mechanism for methane release is still open to
debate," making it
 impossible for scientists to predict whether a massive release from
today's 14,000 gigaton marine
 gas hydrate reservoir could occur again.

 "We know that 55.5 million years ago, carbon dioxide was added to the
atmosphere at a rate
 comparable to present-day fossil fuel input, providing the potential for
using past changes in
 carbon dioxide levels to shed light on future climate change
possibilities," Katz believes.

                                   -NSF-

LOUIS VARRICCHIO
 Environmental Information Specialist &
 Producer/Writer, "Our Changing Planet"
  (Visit OCP-TV on the Web at: www.umac.org/ocp)
  Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium
  Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences
  University of North Dakota
  Grand Forks, N.D. 58202-9007  U.S.A.
    Phone: 701-777-2482
    Fax: 701-777-2940
    E-mail: varricch@umac.org (in N.D.); morbius@together.net (in Vt.)

"Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, a hundred
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth." -- Arthur C. Clarke

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