Scientists have debated for decades what caused the Late Paleozoic climate transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse state ~350 million years ago. Some invoke a pronounced increase in continental […]
![Maps of GEOCLIM simulation (two time slices). “0” maps (left column) are the initial condition, “1” maps (right column) are at the perturbation peak (3 Myr of run time, cf Fig. 4a). (a0–1) Topography and oceanic O2 concentration at bottom of water column, (b0–1) physical erosion rate, showing enhanced physical erosion around the Variscan orogeny, and (c0– 1) regolith depletion quantified by the proportion of unweathered mineral at top of regolith. The uplifted area is contoured in magenta on each map. The boundaries of oceanic boxes, and their corresponding continental drainage basins are drawn on each map (white solid and blue dotted lines). GEOCLIM computes one mean O2 concentration for each of the 21 boxes. The maps panels (a0–1) show the mean concentrations of GEOCLIM bottom boxes drawn on the full geographic extent of these boxes at the oceanic resolution of the FOAM ocean-atmosphere general circulation model [90] simulations, which were used as GEOCLIM forcing. -- Science China Press](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/What-triggered-Earths.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Scientists have debated for decades what caused the Late Paleozoic climate transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse state ~350 million years ago. Some invoke a pronounced increase in continental […]