We have a scientific mystery on our hands. Today the average temperature on Earth is approximately
13.9 degres Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet, during Earth's 4.543 billion year long history it
has been much hotter and much colder, causing our world at certain times to look completely foreign
from a modern day perspective. For example, just 3 million years after Earth's initial formation,
the entire planet was molten and covered with lava with temperatures averaging 1980 degrees
Celsius or 3600 degrees Fahrenheit, with these temperatures having been generated from numerous
large scale and frequent asteroid and comet impacts. Or, during the very early Triassic
period when many towering dinosaurs roamed the planet, Earth was much like a greenhouse,
with temperatures at the equator averaging more than 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees
Fahrenheit. Or, in the geologic period before the first complex life developed during what
is known as the Cryogenian period, Earth was largely covered in several miles thick of ice
and glaciers with only a very narrow band of not continuously frozen ground at the equator,
with average temperatues being approximately -10 degrees Celsius or 14 degrees Fahrenheit. With
this being said, the causes of these long term climatic fluctuations are fairly well established.
Yet, the same cannot be said of a mysterious and unusual temperature spike which occurred
a mere 56 million years ago. This spike can be observed via this edited chart, where a sudden
pin point spike is visible right at the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs. Although
this chart might underestimate the intensity of this climatic fluctuation, it appears that in a
50,000 year period the average global temperatures jumped from 25 to a sweltering 33 degrees Celsius,
before cooling back to 25 degrees Celsius again. While 8 degrees Celsius might not sound like a
lot of change during such a long time period, this unusual event which is referred to as the
Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum represented the most intense temperature spike Earth had
experienced in the preceding 190 million year long period. And, for a long time
scientists did not know why this occurred. As a result, numerous hypotheses were made
including a sudden and dramatic methane release around the planet that caused a positive feedback
loop, a series of flood basalts and large magmatic intrusions offshore of southeastern Greenland,
or even the possibility that it was all triggered by a large asteroid impact. After all, the
mysterious Hiawatha impact crater that measured 31 kilometer across or 19.3 miles wide had initial
evidence which suggested it formed around the same time as the sudden temperature spike. However,
this was later disproven, as the impact event was too old, having occurred 57.99 million years ago.
However, there is now a relatively new theory which not only seems like the best
fit to explain this extreme climatic anomaly in my opinion, but might actually be correct.
This might sound strange, but the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum might have occurred
due to the sudden appearance of millions of diamonds. Well, sort of. As, the reason relates
to how exactly those aforementioned diamonds were emplaced as it involved a specific very
rare type of volcanism which placed a rare and prized type of rock; kimberlite. While
the vast majority of the planet's igneous rocks contain more than 50% by weight silicon dioxide,
kimberlites generally only contain about 25% by weight silicon dioxide. But, more important is
that when kimberlite magmas form deep under the stable cratons of crusts where diamonds
can also form, they can contain as much as 40% by weight carbon dioxide. That is an absurdly high
figure. Carbon dioxide is considered a volatile in the context of volcanoes, and thus the more
carbon dioxide a volcano's magma contains, the more explosive an associated eruption will be.
Thus, as kimberlite magma intrudes into the crust, sometimes carrying diamonds with it,
it often moves as supersonic speeds upwards, being propelled by the absurdly high levels of carbon
dioxide present. After reaching the surface, a powerful largely upward plinian eruption occurs,
which in addition to ejecting numerous diamonds if they were present at the eruption site also
emits large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is thus believed that a majority,
perhaps as many of 200 of the 235 kimberlite pipes in one of the planet's largest kimberlite
fields in Canada's Northwest Territories erupted in rapid succession during a ten
thousand year period. This emitted 1100 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which
then caused methane to be released as part of a positive feedback loop elsewhere on the planet.
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