Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 355, Issue 6329, Pages 1069-1071Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4151
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Funding
- European Research Council [337183]
- European Research Council (ERC) [337183] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Although pH is a fundamental property of Earth's oceans, critical to our understanding of seawater biogeochemistry, its long-timescale geologic history is poorly constrained. We constrain seawater pH through time by accounting for the cycles of the major components of seawater. We infer an increase from early Archean pH values between -6.5 and 7.0 and Phanerozoic values between -7.5 and 9.0, which was caused by a gradual decrease in atmospheric pCO(2) in response to solar brightening, alongside a decrease in hydrothermal exchange between seawater and the ocean crust. A lower pH in Earth's early oceans likely affected the kinetics of chemical reactions associated with the origin of life, the energetics of early metabolisms, and climate through the partitioning of CO2 between the oceans and atmosphere.
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