In a new chapter for the third edition of the Treatise on Geochemistry with Kat Allen and Sandy Kirtland Turner, we systematically analyze the dynamics that couple climate and carbon cycle through CO2 radiative forcing. This includes the first analytical derivation of the silicate weathering timescale. The relevant context of proxy systems for climate and carbon cycle and terminology for coupled climate-carbon cycle change is intended to introduce Earth System science.
In a new synthesis review with Danny Sigman, published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, we entertain the possibility that changes in the ocean’s biological pump and alkalinity were the dominant driver of CO2 and global climate change during Pleistocene ice ages. We show that land-carbon changes effects were canceled by ocean carbonate compensation, and that ice sheet and temperature changes cancel each other. The effect of deep ocean carbon storage, in contrast, is amplified by carbonate compensation, yielding durable CO2 changes.