Ice core evidence for atmospheric oxygen decline since the Mid-Pleistocene transition.

The history of atmospheric oxygen (O) and the processes that act to regulate it remain enigmatic because of difficulties in quantitative reconstructions using indirect proxies. Here, we extend the ice-core record of O using 1.5-million-year-old (Ma) discontinuous ice samples drilled from Allan Hills Blue Ice Area, East Antarctica. No statistically significant difference exists in O between samples at 1.5 Ma and 810 thousand years (ka), suggesting that the Late-Pleistocene imbalance in O sources and sinks began around the time of the transition from 40- to 100-ka glacial cycles in the Mid-Pleistocene between ~1.2 Ma and 700 ka. The absence of a coeval secular increase in atmospheric CO over the past ~1 Ma requires negative feedback mechanisms such as co-dependent silicate weathering. Fast processes must also act to suppress the immediate co increase because of the imbalance in O sinks over sources beginning in the Mid-Pleistocene.