WorldWide Drilling Resource

17 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® AUGUST 2015 Global Warming Event from Over 55 Million Years Ago is Similar Adapted from Information by the University of Utah The rate at which carbon emissions warmed earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warm- ing much more than previously believed. However, according to researchers at the University of Utah, the event involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere. The findings mean the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal max- imum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news is earth and most species survived; the bad news is it took a millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 9-15ºF (5-8ºC). “There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” said University of Utah Geochemist Gabe Bowen, lead author of the study. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.” The new study is part of a major drilling project to understand the 56-milion-year-old warming episode, which was discovered in 1991. Researchers drilled long, core-shaped sediment samples from two boreholes at Polecat Bench in northern Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Bowen and his colleagues claim carbonate or limestone nodules in the Wyoming core samples indicate the global warming episode over 55 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods. “This new study tightens the link,” Bowen added. “Carbon release back then looked a lot like human fossil-fuel emissions today, so we might learn a lot about the future from changes in climate, plants, and animal communities 55.5 million years ago.” Previous evidence from seafloor sediments elsewhere is consistent with two Paleocene-Eocene carbon pulses, which “means we don’t think this is something unique to northern Wyoming,” Bowen said. “We think it reflects a global signal.” Study coauthor Scott Wing, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution said, “This study gives us the best idea yet of how quickly this vast amount of carbon was released at the beginning of the global warming event...That’s important because it means the ancient event happened at a rate more like human-caused global warming than we ever realized.” ! % Silent Auction Seminars - Thursday and Saturday Knowledge for Business, Drilling, Pump, Water Treatment, REHS, Safety, and Technical Subjects Trade Show – Friday Product Spotlight Demonstrations, Lunch on the Showroom Floor Call the CGA of1ce (707) 578-4408 for details and early registration. www.groundh2o.org ! " $ ! ! # ! $ ! Paleobiologist Scott Wing of the Smithsonian Institution holds a core sample drilled from Wyoming’s Willwood formation in a University of Utah-led study of a global warming episode nearly 56 mi l l ion years ago. Photo Credit: William Clyde, University of New Hampshire.