Journal article
Low atmospheric CO 2 levels during the Little Ice Age due to cooling-induced terrestrial uptake
M Rubino, DM Etheridge, CM Trudinger, CE Allison, PJ Rayner, I Enting, R Mulvaney, LP Steele, RL Langenfelds, WT Sturges, MAJ Curran, AM Smith
Nature Geoscience | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2769
Abstract
Low atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) concentration during the Little Ice Age has been used to derive the global carbon cycle sensitivity to temperature. Recent evidence confirms earlier indications that the low CO 2 was caused by increased terrestrial carbon storage. It remains unknown whether the terrestrial biosphere responded to temperature variations, or there was vegetation re-growth on abandoned farmland. Here we present a global numerical simulation of atmospheric carbonyl sulfide concentrations in the pre-industrial period. Carbonyl sulfide concentration is linked to changes in gross primary production and shows a positive anomaly during the Little Ice Age. We show that a decrease i..
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Awarded by Natural Environment Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was undertaken as part of the Australian Climate Change Science Program, funded by the Australian government-Department of the Environment, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. We thank S. Coram, R. Gregory, D. Thornton and D. Spencer of CSIRO for their analytical support and S. Allin for ice handling. W. Sturges recognizes the CSIRO Frohlich Fellowship for supporting a visit to CSIRO, Aspendale. P.J.R. was supported by an Australian Professorial Fellowship (DP1096309). M.R.'s visit to CSIRO and D.M.E.'s visit to the Second University of Naples were supported by the Italian POLIGRID project (CUP B65B0900002007). The DML ice was sampled using funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (grant NE/F021194/1). We thank the British Antarctic Survey for providing DML ice samples. The Australian Antarctic Science Program and ANSTO supported drilling of DSS0506 through the AINSE grant and AAS grants 4061 and 3064. We thank P. Fraser for useful comments.