The supercontinent cycle is a key oscillation of the Earth system with alternating aggregation and breakup of the supercontinent. It is important to know how Earth's climate system changes with this significant oscillation. Here, we demonstrate a unified picture of Earth's climate history since 4.4 billion years before present by deriving temperature, sea level, biodiversity, CO2, and geomagnetic intensity curves from a large number of Precambrian datasets. There were significant oscillations of temperature, sea level, biodiversity and geomagnetic intensity during the Precambrian period. Temperature oscillated by 20-60 oC, sea level rose and fell by 100-200 meters, and geomagnetic intensity oscillated by about 50% of its mean value. Temperature, sea level and geomagnetic intensity showed good in-phase relationship and tended to slightly lead orogenesis of the supercontinent cycle. We found that d13C captures well the Phanerozoic mass extinction events, and Precambrian biodiversity history showed seven "super mass extinction events".
Supplement to: Lin, Jialin; Qian, Taotao (submitted): Earth's Climate History Associated with The Supercontinent Cycle. Geophysical Research Letters