Atmospheric oxygenation and volcanism

James F. Kasting (), David C. Catling and Kevin Zahnle
Additional contact information
James F. Kasting: The Pennsylvania State University, 443 Deike, University Park
David C. Catling: and Astrobiology Program, Box 351310, University of Washington
Kevin Zahnle: NASA Ames Research Center, MS 245-3

Nature, 2012, vol. 487, issue 7408, E1-E1

Abstract: Abstract Arising from F. Gaillard, B. Scaillet & N. T. Arndt Nature 478, 229–232(2011)10.1038/nature10460 Around 2.5 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere turned from anoxic to oxic in what is known as the Great Oxidation Event. Gaillard et al.1 suggest that this oxygenation was caused by the emergence of the continents and a shift in volcanism from predominantly submarine to primarily subaerial conditions. Because the ratio of volcanic SO2 to H2S in their model increases with this shift, they argue that the atmosphere became more oxidized. But their model also predicts that outgassing of CO2 decreases at the lower pressure of continental volcanism, and that this should act against atmospheric oxygenation because CO2 is the substrate for the production of oxygen from photosynthesis. Hence, their mechanism may not trigger a rise in atmospheric O2.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11274 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:487:y:2012:i:7408:d:10.1038_nature11274

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature11274

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().