Drilling barge on Lake Towuti, Indonesia’s second largest lake. Below a water depth of 130 m, conditions are equivalent to those in the oceans three billion years ago. Image: Team Kallmeyer, GFZ
Drilling barge on Lake Towuti, Indonesia's second largest lake. Below a water depth of 130 m, conditions are equivalent to those in the oceans three billion years ago. Image: Team Kallmeyer, GFZ - For a long time, climate researchers could not explain the high concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere around three billion years ago. Now an international research team with the participation of Hendrik Vogel from the Institute of Geological Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern has solved the mystery. Sediment analyses revealed the surprising result that under the conditions at that time, microbes mainly produced the highly effective greenhouse gas methane for their metabolism. Three billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than today: the oceans were nearly free of oxygen and the sediments on the ocean floor were rich in iron minerals. The early Sun was much dimmer than today and yet the oceans contained liquid water requiring that Earth was not frozen.
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