Scientists Discover the Root Cause of Fatal Climate Change in Ancient Era

Research has connected widespread extinctions and shifts in climate during the last 260 million years to enormous volcanic eruptions and Earth's astronomical cycles. This study underscores the function of CO2 emissions in climate change, and highlights a complex link between the geography of Earth and its spatial location. It should be noted that these influences differ from the contemporary climate change driven by human activity.

A group of researchers have established that the mass extinctions that have taken place over the past 260 million years, were primarily due to enormous volcanic eruptions and their consequent environmental impact.

Published in the Earth-Science Reviews journal, their analysis demonstrates that these eruptions released substantial quantities of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. This led to severe greenhouse warming, creating almost lethal or entirely lethal conditions for our planet.

The researchers reveal that these events — which occur every 26 to 33 million years — coincided with important changes in the Earth’s solar orbit that follow similar cyclical patterns.

New York University Biology Professor Michael Rampino, the paper's senior author, says, “The geological processes on Earth, long believed to be strictly determined by events within the planet's interior, might actually be governed by astronomical cycles in our solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy. These forces have repeatedly converged in Earth’s history, indicating potential dramatic shifts in our climate.”

The researchers, including Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution for Science and Sedelia Rodriguez, a geologist at Barnard College, stress that their findings have no impact on climate change in the 20th and 21st centuries, which is attributed to human activities. The last studied pulses of volcanic eruptions happened about 16 million years ago.

Despite this, they highlight that their study backs up the widely accepted effect of carbon dioxide emissions on global warming.

The scientists examined continental flood-basalt (CFB) eruptions, the largest types of volcanic eruptions on Earth, which spread lava across nearly half a million square miles. They also looked into other significant geological events over the past 260 million years, such as ocean anoxic events which lead to deoxygenated, toxic waters, hyper-thermal climate pulses (rapid rises in global temperatures), and consequent periods of mass extinctions of marine and terrestrial life.

They discovered that CFB eruptions often happened simultaneously with these other catastrophic geological events, elucidating the broader effects of volcanic activity. The link with astronomy is proven by the shared timing of the multi-million-year regular cycles of extreme climate and volcanic activity, with known cycles of Earth’s orbit in our solar system and in the Milky Way galaxy.

The researchers found an overly suspiciously close matching between geological and astronomical cycles. Their remaining question is to find out how Earth's astronomical movements influence the planet's internal geological functions.

Rampino remarks, “This unexpected link predicts a convergence of both astronomy and geology — meaning, events that happen on Earth take place in the context of our astronomical surroundings.”