PhD Studentship: How do Large Igneous Provinces Cause Environmental Catastrophes?

C-FORCE: Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks from Response to Carbon Emissions is a major international project led by the University of Birmingham. We will measure how Earth responded to greenhouse gas emissions throughout a past global climate change event akin our current "anthropogenic experiment" to answer how the climate evolved and eventually recovered after the initial warming. C-FORCE will focus on the link between the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province (NAIP) and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Over 5 years beginning November 2022, C-FORCE will make a new accurate reconstruction of carbon emissions through time from the NAIP (the 'forcing function') as well as an independent record of the total carbon emissions (the 'response function').  The 'feedback function' will eventually be determined as the difference between the response and forcing functions. We aim to find out whether the climatic response is closely tied to the volcanic forcing function, or whether potentially dangerous tipping points acted to decouple the climatic response from the initial forcing.   

In this CENTA project, we want to roll out techniques and exploit results of C-FORCE to probe the causative relationship between other Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) and coeval environmental catastrophes. These include the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP)/end Triassic mass extinction, the Siberian Traps/end Permian mass extinction, the Karoo LIP/Toarcian ocean anoxia event, the Wrangellia LIP/Carnian Pluvial Episode, the Deccan Traps/end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Whilst an increasing amount of quality data on volcanism and environmental consequences exists for these and other pairs, no dataset can yet match the detailed records available for the NAIP/PETM pair. The project will include seeking comparable datasets and information from project collaborators in China. By viewing all these LIP / environmental change pairs through the prism of C-FORCE, we aim to develop a unifying model for the link between large igneous provinces and environmental catastrophes. In this model we wish to move beyond simple correlations, and towards a full physical model for how magma is generated rapidly at the base of the plate, how it is emplaced rapidly in the upper plate, how it generates and releases greenhouse gases, and how these forcing gases and feedbacks within the ocean-atmosphere system cause environmental catastrophes.  

For further information on this project and details of how to apply to it please click on the above 'Apply' button

Further information on how to apply for a CENTA studentship can be found on the CENTA website: https://centa.ac.uk/

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