ESSIC / GEOL Professor James Farquhar is a co-author of a newly released study published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper entitled “Biological regulation of atmospheric chemistry en route to planetary oxygenation,” explores emerging evidence that a methane-derived organic haze was a large contributing factor associated with the Great Oxidation Event. During the global scale phenomena that occurred over 2 billion years ago, biologically induced dioxygen flooded the earth’s atmosphere. The study suggests that the presence of haze may have trigged the escape of hydrogen from the atmosphere, effectively leading to the terminal oxidation of the Earth’s surficial environment.
