Atmospheres Archean

Olson, J. S. In The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2 Natural Variations Archean to Present Sundquist, E. T. Broecker, W. S., Eds. Geophysical Monograph 32 American Geophysical Union Washington DC, 1985 pp. 377-396. 

Archean 3.8 Gyr Origin of life prokaryotes flourish. Photosynthetic cells liberate oxygen, O2 first appears in the atmosphere... 

Des Marais, D.J. (1985) Carbon exchange between the mantle and crust, and its effect upon the atmosphere Today compared to Archean time. In Sundquist, E.T. and Broecker, W.S. (eds.), The Carbon Cycle and Atmosphere CO2 Natural Variations Archean to Present. Washington, D.C. Am. Geophysical Union, pp. 602-611. 

Canfield, D.E., Habicht, K.S. and Thamdrup, B. (2000). The Archean sulphur cycle and the early history of atmospheric oxygen. Science, 288, 658-661... 

Only a few evaporites have been found that are more than 800 miUion years old, indicating that most of the salt formed prior to this period has been recycled via uplift and weathering. No evaporites of Archean age have as yet been discovered. The oldest known chemical sediments were deposited 3.45 bybp in what is now western Australia. They appear to have precipitated as shallow-water carbonates. This suggests that sulfate concentrations during the Archean were much lower than present day, probably because of limited oxygenation of the atmosphere and ocean. 

In recent years innumerable publications have dealt with the natural carbon cycle and its alteration by human activities. Some summary works of interest in this chapter are Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and the Global Carbon Cycle (ed. Trabalka, 1985), The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2 Natural Variations, Archean to Present (eds. Sundquist and Broecker, 1985), Chemical Cycles in the Evolution of the Earth (eds. Gregor, Garrels, Mackenzie, and Maynard, 1988), History of the Earth s Atmosphere (Budyko, Ronov, and Yanshin, 1985), and The Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans (Holland, 1984). The interested reader is referred to these volumes for further discussion of material presented here. 

Senum G.L. and Gaffney J.S. (1985) A reexamination of the tropospheric methane cycle Geophysical implications. In The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric CO2 Natural variations Archean to Present (eds. E.T. Sundquist and W.S. Broecker), pp. 61-69. AGU Geophys. Monograph 32, Washington, D.C. 

MIF in oxygen isotopes (O-MIF) is well known in primitive meteorites [1] and in atmospheric O3 [2,3], and MIF in sulfur isotopes (S-MIF) has been discovered in Archean rocks [4] and modern ice core sulfates [5]. In terrestrial environments... 

Chemical, as opposed to photolytic, sources of S-MIF are also possible in the Archean atmosphere. By analogy with oxygen MIF produced during O3 formation [2], which is attributed to a symmetry-dependent non-statistical redistribution of internal energy in the vibrationally excited O3 [7], it is likely that reactions such... 

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