Paper detail

Seafloor Weathering and Stochastic Outgassing Unlikely to Significantly Shorten the Future Lifespan of Earth's Terrestrial Biosphere

Current understanding suggests that as the Sun brightens in the far future, Earth's carbonate-silicate cycle will offset increasing temperatures by drawing CO$_2$ out of the atmosphere, ultimately leading to the extinction of all terrestrial plant life via either overheating or CO$_2$ starvation. Most previous estimates put the future lifespan of Earth's terrestrial biosphere at $\sim$1 billion yr, but recent work used a new coupled climate-continental weathering model with up-to-date parameter constraints to revise this estimate upward to 1.6-1.86 billion yr. In this study, we extend the model to examine the impacts of seafloor weathering and stochastic variations in CO$_2$ outgassing rates on the remaining lifespan of Earth's terrestrial biosphere. We find that if seafloor weathering has a stronger feedback than continental weathering and accounts for a large portion of global silicate weathering, then the remaining lifespan of the terrestrial biosphere can be shortened, but a lifespan of more than 1 billion yr (Gyr) remains likely. Similarly, stochastic fluctuations in outgassing rates can have a significant impact if the size of the fluctuations exceed those observed over the last 1 billion yr. The impact of weak seafloor weathering and lower variability stochasticity are minor. Our work provisionally supports a lengthened lifespan of Earth's terrestrial biosphere, suggests robustness of this lengthened lifespan to planetary parameters that may vary among exoplanets, and identifies seafloor weathering as a key process that requires further study and constraint.