EONS: A New Biogeochemical Model of Earth's Oxygen, Carbon, Phosphorus, and Nitrogen Systems From the Archean to the Present

Abstract

Abstract We present Earth's Oxygenation and Natural Systematics (EONS): a new, fully coupled biogeochemical model of the atmosphere, ocean, and their interactions with the geosphere, which can reproduce major features of Earth's evolution following the origin of life to the present day. The model, consisting of 257 unique fluxes between 96 unique chemical reservoirs, includes an interactive biosphere, cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen, and climate. A nominal model run initialized in the Eoarchean resolves emergent surface oxygenation, nutrient limitations, and climate feedbacks. The modeled atmosphere oxygenates in stepwise fashion over the course of the Proterozoic; a nearly billion year lag after the evolution of photosynthesis at 3.5 Ga is followed by a great oxidation event at 2.4 Ga, which appears to be caused by the gradual buildup of organic matter on the continents imposing nutrient limitation on the biosphere by removing key nutrients from the ocean system. The simple climate system shows significant temperature shifts punctuate the oxygenation process, implying that major biological transitions possibly destabilized Earth's climate. This work demonstrates that forward modeling the entirety of Earth's history with relatively few imposed boundary forcings is feasible, that the Earth system is not at steady state, and that our understanding of coupled C‐N‐P‐O cycling as it functions today can explain much of the Earth's evolution.

Keywords

• biogeochemistry
• box model
• Earth systems
• oxygen
• Precambrian