PETM: Good Science Meets Science Journalism in the Gulf of Mexico
1 day ago David Middleton 68 Comments
Guest “Oy vey!” by David Middleton
4 June 2022
Qamariya Nasrullah
How ancient ocean life in the Gulf of Mexico escaped mass extinction
The geology of the sheltered basin helped protect life against global warming.
A bout of global warming 56 million years ago acidified oceans and wiped out marine life. But in the Gulf of Mexico, the effect was much milder. Research on the unique geology of this North American basin has revealed how life was able to escape local extinction.
The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a brief period of global warming, which saw a 5°C to 8°C spike in temperature and caused large changes in ocean chemistry. This caused a severe deep-sea benthic foraminifera extinction, known as the Benthic Extinction Event (BEE).
“This event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, is very important to understand because it’s pointing towards a very powerful, albeit brief, injection of carbon into the atmosphere that’s akin to what’s happening now,” says lead author Dr Bob Cunningham, from the University of Texas, US.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/07/petm-good-science-meets-science-journalism/
