Evolution of Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt

This video shows plate motions, carbon storage within tectonic plates and carbon degassing along mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones through time. Our carbon model shows these processes alone cannot explain global cooling in the Cenozoic Era. The effects of rock erosion, not shown here, played a key role. Arrows indicate plate motion speed relative to … Read more…

Visualizing the Deep Carbon Cycle

Christian Fogerty, writing for American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s EoS magazine, reviews some of our work on modelling and visualising Earth’s deep carbon cycle. We started our exciting journey with the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) in 2015, and these projects have laid the foundations of a lot of exciting future work. Importantly, the team behind the … Read more…

NSW South Coast Carbon Down Under Field Excursion 2019

A fun day at the NSW South Coast introduced the Deep Carbon Observatory“Carbon Down Under” workshop participants to the Late Permian and Lower Triassic geology of the Sydney Basin. The Triassic Narrabeen sandstones, deposited after the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, are devoid of signs of life and represent a time when atmospheric CO2 was at about 6 … Read more…

Carbon Down Under workshop – 24 to 26 July 2019

Carbon Down Under

We are excited to announce a Sydney-based workshop that will bring existing and emerging leaders in deep carbon research to discuss the state of the discipline, but importantly a plan for future collaboration that builds on the momentum generated by the Deep Carbon Observatory. The workshop will be held on Wednesday and Thursday 24 and … Read more…

Mapping the Growth of Seafloor Carbonates in Deep Time

A news article published by the Deep Carbon Observatory entitled “Mapping the Growth of Seafloor Carbonates in Deep Time” explains how Adriana Dutkiewicz and colleagues used records of carbonate layers logged from cores collected during scientific ocean drilling expeditions combined with a model of ocean basin evolution to unravel the role deep sea carbonate deposition might have … Read more…

Sabin Zahirovic awarded DCO Emerging Leader for 2018

Congratulations to Sabin Zahirovic for receiving an Emerging Leader Award for his work with an international and interdisciplinary Deep Carbon Observatory team investigating links between the evolution of our planet and the exchange of carbon between Earth’s interior and the surface. He was independently nominated by a total of 5 DCO members from 4 countries! Sabin will receive AU$2,000 … Read more…

Two New Sloan Foundation Grants for Deep Carbon Science

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation recently announced two new Officer’s Grants for deep carbon science, supporting important community building and modeling efforts. These new projects will invigorate a community of scientists committed to understanding the evolution of deep carbon through deep time through 2019 and beyond. “Carbon Down Under: Galvanizing Australia’s research community for the … Read more…

The influence of carbonate platform interactions with subduction zone volcanism on palaeo-atmospheric CO2 since the Devonian

Abstract: The CO2 liberated along subduction zones through intrusive/extrusive magmatic activity and the resulting active and diffuse outgassing influences global atmospheric CO2. However, when melts derived from subduction zones intersect buried carbonate platforms, decarbonation reactions may cause the contribution to atmospheric CO2 to be far greater than segments of the active margin that lacks buried carbon-rich rocks and … Read more…

Deep Carbon Observatory Cambridge-Sydney workshop

Almost 30 members of the Deep Carbon Observatory Science Network met on 5 and 6 April 2018 at the University of Cambridge, UK to discuss ways of linking plate tectonic reconstructions to aspects of the deep carbon cycle over geological time. Sabin Zahirovic (EarthByte, University of Sydney, Australia), DCO Synthesis Group 2019 Chair Marie Edmonds … Read more…

Untangling The Role Of Climate On Sediment And Reef Evolution Over Millennial Timescales

Climatic variability like precipitation changes or increase in extreme events such as storms and tropical cyclones is known to significantly modify the Earth’s surface. Yet, our understanding of how sediment dynamics and reef evolution might respond to these changes is still limited. In a recent study, a team of researchers from the University of Sydney’s … Read more…

Degassing from Continental Rifts Controls Earth’s Thermostat

As a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has played a major role in regulating Earth’s climate throughout its history. There are vast stores of carbon in the subsurface, but the global carbon cycle controls how much of that carbon enters the atmosphere. As methods for monitoring and tracking the carbon dioxide that moves … Read more…

Model of Australia’s Tectonic Stress May Future-Proof Carbon Storage

In response to ever-rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, some countries are exploring carbon sequestration as a way to mitigate the effects of this greenhouse gas. The general strategy is to inject carbon dioxide more than a mile underground, beneath an impermeable rock layer, where it can dissolve into fluids and crystallize. Injection locations … Read more…

Subduction zone lengths: A modelled reality?

In order to see how well the Matthews et al. (2016) plate kinematic model (Figure 2) can be relied upon to represent subduction zone length variations through time, we measured plate boundaries from the Bird (2003) global plate boundary data set (Figure 1). This was achieved using a combination of ArcGIS and our subduction zone analysis tools. … Read more…

Setting up environment for DCO Demo Analysis

Mac Environment 1.1) Install Anaconda Navigate to the continuum website and download the python 2.7 Mac version of Anaconda, if not already installed. In terminal, where the downloaded anaconda source code is stored, type: bash Anaconda2-4.1.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh Select yes to all of the prompts. Edit your .bash_profile to include the anaconda bin path in the PATH … Read more…

Deep Carbon Modelling Workshop

Date:  August 29 – 30 2016 Venue: The University of Sydney Description: A two-day workshop bringing together climate and geo-scientists from around Sydney and international collaborators on the DCO-funded Deep Carbon Modelling project. Deep carbon science describes the multi-disciplinary effort to unravel the dynamic interactions of carbon-bearing systems in deep time. The workshop will focus on exploring the interplays … Read more…

Calculating arc-trench distances using the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Project database

Figure 1. Using ArcMap to visualise and calculate the distances between volcano locations (data points, yellow triangles) and subduction zones (black polylines).   Based on a study of 20 selected segments of arc-trench systems, Dickson (1973) found that the distance between trench axes to magmatic arc axes (or volcanic front) ranged from between 100 to 300 km … Read more…

Visualising the influence of oceanic crust characteristics on subduction CO2 flux

How significant is the crustal carbon reservoir? The incorporation of CO2 in oceanic crust and carbon-rich seafloor sediments facilitates the removal of carbon in the world’s oceans. At subduction zones, CO2 is recycled in the mantle.  Our interest in modelling the CO2 flux budget between the oceanic crust and the mantle is to investigate the long-term balance between CO2 sources and CO2 … Read more…

Workflow explained: analysing the composition of subducted oceanic crust through time

How can we sample the composition of subducting crust throughout deep time? Using a similar method as our subduction zone analysis, we developed a workflow to sample oceanic crust composition along subduction zones. We wanted to observe the composition of the upper oceanic crust as it subducts. From our previous analysis we are able to resolve and extract … Read more…

Modelling CO2, subduction zone volcanism and carbonate platform interactions

During the Cretaceous to early Paleogene, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide reached levels of 1 200 – 2 400 ppm. Concurrently, subduction zone lengths reached lengths of up to 52 000 km based on previous estimates, and were dominated by continental arcs. Continent-sourced carbonates too have a significant impact on CO2 flux from subduction volcanism. As continental arcs … Read more…

Workflow explained: The interaction of subduction zone volcanism with carbonate platforms and continents

Objectives Our two objectives of analysis were to (a) quantify the km-long length areas of interaction of subduction zone volcanism with carbonate platforms and (b) characterise the subduction volcanism as either continental or intra-oceanic depending on the proximity of the subduction zones to continent-ocean boundaries. In regards to the first objective, we are interested in cases where subduction-related … Read more…

Workflow explained: Measuring global subduction zone lengths with pyGPlates

For our first analysis, we developed a simple work flow to quantify subduction zone lengths from 0 to 400 Ma, using the Matthews et al. (2016) plate kinematic model. The bash workflow consists of python scripts, GMT tools and AWK scripts organised into bash sub-routine functions. The most integral parts of the workflow are the python scripts … Read more…

Creating an evolving model of carbonate platform development and accumulation

What do crustal carbonates have to do with CO2 emissions? The proliferation of reefs and carbonate platforms in shallow-water environments contribute to accumulation of organic-C-rich carbonate rocks along the edge of continents. These platforms are a persistent phenomenon throughout the Phanerozoic and strongly suggests that large volumes of carbonates are buried in the upper crust within the … Read more…

Deep Carbon Modelling and Visualisation Project

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a 10-year international research initiative to connect scientists from diverse fields and facilitate collaborative research and technology development in the field of deep carbon science. In order to address barriers to communicating the planetary carbon cycle to the public, a Modeling and Visualization workshop was held in May 2015 in Washington D.C. to bring … Read more…