ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0001-9134-2636

Graduation Semester and Year

2022

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Earth and Environmental Science

Department

Earth and Environmental Sciences

First Advisor

Arne Winguth

Abstract

Climate models have been widely adapted to reconstruct the environmental changes and associated mass extinction events across geologic times, such as the Younger Dryas (~12.9 Kyr), the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maxima (~55 Ma), and the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction Event (~251 Ma). However, few studies have utilized climate models to investigate the potential climatic triggers of the large biological decline at the end-Triassic Mass Extinction (ETE; ~201 Ma). In this study, global boundary conditions for the end-Triassic hothouse climate are developed in order to allow a common framework for paleoclimate simulation and to study to internal climate variability in order to better understand environmental causes of mass extinctions and to serve as an analog for future transition in warmer world. The ETE is of particular interest because it is marked by a global negative excursion in the δ13Corg concentration which is coincident with the onset of the observed biotic decline, potentially triggered by volcanic outgassing from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province eruption. Such an eruption could have increased the seasonality of an already arid climate as evident in the depositional patters across the Dockum Group of western Texas. The boundary conditions developed for this study will benefit future climate modeling experiment and help gain an understand of how periodic supercritical flow deposits and monsoonal circulations were impacted by an increase in the CO2 radiative forcing as resulting from the CAMP eruptions.

Keywords

Climate modeling, CESM1.2, Late Triassic, Mass extinction

Disciplines

Earth Sciences | Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

30934-2.zip (5057 kB)

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