A "leakage" of carbon could help the development of human civilization 11 thousand years ago

A "leakage" of carbon dioxide could be responsible for global warming during the Holocene, over the last 11,000 years, due to the activity of the Antarctic Ocean, which would have favored the development of human civilization, says a study published today by Nature Geosciences

The oceans are the largest deposits of atmospheric CO2 at time scales from decades to millennia, an ability that is affected by the behavior of the Antarctic Ocean, hence an increase in its activity "Could explain the mysterious heat of the last 11 000 years."

The heat of this period has been stabilized by the gradual increase in CO2 snow and that is why to understand the reason for this increase is "of great interest", according to the report. one of the authors of the study of Princeton University (USA) Daniel Sigman, who collaborated with the Max Planck Institute of German Chemistry.

Although scientists had proposed various hypotheses to explain the increase in carbon dioxide, until now the cause was unknown.

However, the new study suggests that "an increase in traffic in the Antarctic has allowed a carbon dioxide leak to the results of this group on ocean changes may also have implications for predictions on the how global warming will affect ocean circulation and how much atmospheric CO2 will reach the upper layers due to combustion Experts have known for years that the growth and decline of phytoplankton pump carbon dioxide into the depths of the ocean. ocean, a process known as the "biological pump" and which is inverted near the poles, where the CO2 is expelled into the atmosphere, explained Sigman.

The team discovered that 39; an increase in the outcrop of the Antarctic Ocean co (the vertical displacement of deeper waters, colder and denser towards the surface) "could be responsible for stabilizing the climate of the Holocene, a period that began 10,000 years before the industrial revolution.

Most Scientists agree that Holocene heat was "fundamental to the development of human civilization, a warm period that involved the retreat of glaciers, opening space for humans, and with a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that was doing more

Currently, there are scientific currents that consider that the Holocene is over and that we are entering a new geological stage called Anthropocene, which indicates that most of the planet's changes are of human origin.

During the Holocene, the climate was "unusually stable" and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere rose from 260 parts per thousand at the beginning of the period up to 280 parts per million in the late period.

"This small but significant increase" of 20 parts per million had, according to the scientist, "a fundamental role in the prevention of progressive cooling during the Holocene". In comparison, since the beginning of industrialization and up to today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from 280 to over 400 parts per million, due to the "If these discoveries on the Holocene can be used to predict the outcropping of the Antarctic ice-sea in the future, this will improve our ability to predict changes in atmospheric CO2 and hence the global climate, "said Sigman.