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Large influence of dust on the Precambrian climate

Peng Liu,Yonggang Liu,Yiran Peng,J. Lamarque,Mingxing Wang,Yongyun Hu

Published 2020 in Nature Communications

ABSTRACT

On present-day Earth, dust emissions are restricted only to a few desert regions mainly due to the distribution of land vegetation. The atmospheric dust loading is thus relatively small and has a slight cooling effect on the surface climate. For the Precambrian (before ~540 Ma), however, dust emission might be much more widespread since land vegetation was absent. Here, our simulations using an Earth system model (CESM1.2.2) demonstrate that the global dust emission during that time might be an order of magnitude larger than that of the present day, and could have cooled the global climate by ~10 °C. Similarly, the dust deposition in the ocean, an important source of nutrition for the marine ecosystem, was also increased by a factor of ~10. Therefore, dust was a critical component of the early Earth system, and should always be considered when studying the climate and biogeochemistry of the Precambrian. Dust emissions are likely to increase significantly when land vegetation is absent, such as during the Precambrian period. Here, the authors use climate simulations to find that high dust emissions in the Precambrian could have cooled the global climate by ~10 °C.

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