Earth may have been exposed to more UV in the past than thought. That radiation is deadly to life, but also may have spurred evolution on.
Fortunately for us, the Earth’s layer provides varying levels of UV protection across the Earth’s surface which varies with season and latitude. Overall, it prevents between 97% and 99% of the Sun’s medium-frequency UV light from striking the Earth’s surface. But the ozone layer’s effectiveness is dependent on the oxygen content in Earth’s atmosphere, and that content has fluctuated over time.
Earth’s oxygen level has fluctuated over time, but the GOE is the most significant event in the history of Earth’s oxygen levels. Another event named the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event may have also played an essential role in raising Earth’s oxygen levels. Still, it’s not as well-understood—or even agreed-upon—as the GOE. But in any case, as oxygen levels go, so goes the ozone.
Models of Earth’s climate history are the basis of this study. The models show that previous estimates of surface UV levels could have underestimated UV exposure. Instead, Earth might have been subjected to ten times more UV than we thought. This image is a schematic of the WACCM6 Earth System Model. In this work, WACCM6 used a fully interactive ocean model and land-ice, sea-ice, land and atmosphere models. WACCM6 has fully coupled chemistry and physics, a state-of-the-art moist physics scheme, and simulates up to roughly 140 km in altitude in the pre-industrial atmosphere. Image Credit: Cooke et al. 2022/University of Leedsto measure atmospheric ozone levels.
“If our modelling is indicative of atmospheric scenarios during Earth’s oxygenated history, then for over a billion years, the Earth could have been bathed in UV radiation that was much more intense than previously believed,” Cooke said.
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