The oxygen isotope evolution of seawater: A critical review of a long-standing controversy and an improved geological water cycle model for the past 3.4 billion years

Controversy over the oxygen isotope composition of seawater began in the 1950's, since which time there has been no agreement over whether the oxygen isotope composition of the oceans has changed over time. Resolving this uncertainty would allow the δO values of demonstrably well preserved marine authigenic precipitates to be used to reconstruct surface climate trends back to early Archean times and would help towards a more quantitative description of Earth's global water cycle on geological time scales. Isotopic studies of marine carbonate and silica reveal a trend of increasing δO values with decreasing age since the Archean. This trend has been interpreted by some to reflect a progressive increase in seawater δO through time; however, it is generally accepted on the basis of ophiolite studies and theoretical considerations that seawater δO cannot change significantly because of the buffering effects of ocean crust alteration at mid-ocean ridges. As a result many alternative interpretations have been proposed, including meteoric alteration; warmer paleoclimates; higher seawater pH; salinity stratification and biased sampling. Here we review these interpretations in the light of an updated compilation of marine carbonate δO from around the world, covering the Phanerozoic and Precambrian rock records. Recent models of the geological water cycle demonstrate how long-term trends in chemical weathering and hydrothermal circulation can indeed influence the O-isotope composition of the global ocean to the extent necessary to explain the carbonate δO trend, with residual variation attributed to climatic fluctuations and postdepositional alteration. We present the further development of an existing model of the geological water cycle. In the model, seawater δO increased from about −13.3‰ to −0.3‰ over a period of 3.4 Ga, with average surface temperatures fluctuating between 10 °C to 33 °C, which is consistent with known biological constraints. Similar temperature variations are also obtained, although with higher starting seawater δO composition, when more conservative approaches are used that take into account the systematic effects of diagenetic alteration on mean calcite δO values. In contrast to much published opinion, the average δO value of ocean crust in the model remained relatively unchanged throughout all model runs. Invariable ophiolite δO values can, therefore, not be used as a definitive argument against changing seawater δO. The most likely explanation for the long-term trend in seawater δO invokes two stepwise increases in the ratio of highto lowtemperature fluid/rock interactions. An initial increase may have occurred close to the Archean–Proterozoic boundary, but a possibly more significant increase took place near the Proterozoic–Phanerozoic boundary. Possible explanations for extremely low ⁎ Corresponding author. Fax: +61 7 4725 1501. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.B.D. Jaffrés). 1 Present address: Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, 48149 Münster, Germany. 0012-8252/$ see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2007.04.002 84 J.B.D. Jaffrés et al. / Earth-Science Reviews 83 (2007) 83–122 seawater δO during the Archean include higher continental weathering rates caused by a combination of higher atmospheric pCO2 (necessarily combined with high CO2 outgassing rates), a greater abundance of relatively easily weathered volcanic rocks in greenstone belts and partial emergence of spreading ridges. The second increase may have been caused by the suppression of lowtemperature overprinting of ocean crust alteration by the formation of a thick sediment cover on ridge flanks due to the emergence of shelly plankton at the beginning of the Phanerozoic. Postulated increases in spreading ridge depths since the Archean would also have enhanced the efficiency of vertical heat flux and changed the depth at which hydrothermal fluids boil, both of which would favour highover low-temperature interactions with time. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.