CARBON AND MERCURY CYCLE DURING THE PALEOCENE-EOCENE THERMAL MAXIMUM

The Paleocene-Eocene (ca. 56 million years ago) is a time period when global temperatures increased greatly due to rapid emissions of carbon dioxide, which shares many similarities to the ongoing anthropogenic global warming. At the same time, unusually high mercury anomalies (up to >90,000 ppb Hg concentration in the North Sea) have been observed across the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) in many sites near the Atlantic Ocean (Jones et al. 2019). This mercury anomaly is hypothesized to originate from volcanic activity and hydrothermal vents in the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province (NAIP). We use a carbon and mercury cycle model (CARMER) to understand the link between the NAIP volcanism and the carbon emissions during the PETM. The amount and pace of CO₂ released and the mercury emitted from the NAIP (with contributions from wildfire) are quantitatively estimated based on the carbon isotopes and mercury concentration records we complied. These results will be compared to the PETM samples collected from the eastern Tethys on an astronomically-tuned age model based on magnetic susceptibility. This new data-guided modeling study can provide new insight about he driver of the CO₂ increase and climate change during the PETM.