The cause of Late Cretaceous cooling: A multimodel-proxy comparison
2016
Proxy temperature reconstructions indicate a dramatic cooling from the Cenomanian
to Maastrichtian. However, the spatial extent of and mechanisms responsible for this cooling
remain uncertain, given simultaneous climatic influences of tectonic and greenhouse
gas changes through the Late Cretaceous. Here we compare several climate simulations of
the Cretaceous using two different Earth system models with a compilation of sea-surface
temperature proxies from the Cenomanian and Maastrichtian to better understand Late
Cretaceous climate change. In general, surface temperature responses are consistent between
models, lending confidence to our findings. Our comparison of proxies and models confirms
that Late Cretaceous cooling was a widespread phenomenon and likely due to a reduction in
greenhouse gas concentrations in excess of a halving of CO 2 , not changes in paleogeography.
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