Do sedimentary sulfur phases link the biogeochemical cycle of calcium to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations?

碳和硫化合物的风化和埋藏控制着大气中氧气、二氧化碳的长期平衡，以及海洋中营养物质的可用性和吸收。这些所谓的地球化学循环是由物理过程控制的，如风化和海底下的微生物氧化还原反应。虽然人们对碳循环有很好的了解，但对硫循环的了解要少得多。由于海洋中氧化硫（硫酸盐）的量很大，而输入和输出通量被认为很小，因此通常认为硫循环的可测量变化只发生在很长的时间尺度上（千万年）。然而，最近的研究表明，硫通量可以经历大而快的波动。初步分析表明，这些通量变化大到足以影响海洋氧合和大气二氧化碳浓度。在这里，我建议详细探讨这些影响，以更好地了解它们是如何产生的，影响了冰期和间冰期的二氧化碳水平。

The weathering and burial of carbon and sulfur compounds controls the long term balance of atmospheric oxygen, carbon-dioxide, as well nutrient availability and uptake in the ocean. These so called biogeochemical cycles are controlled by physical processes like weathering, and microbial redox reactions in the sub-seafloor. While the carbon cycle is well understood, much less is known about the sulfur cycle. Since the amount of oxidized sulfur (sulfate) in the ocean is large, and the input and output fluxes are thought to be small, it is generally assumed that measurable changes to the sulfur cycle only occur over very long timescales (tenth of millions of years). Recent research shows however that sulfur fluxes can undergo large and fast fluctuations. Preliminary analysis shows that these flux changes are large enough to be able to affect ocean oxygenation and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Here I propose to explore these effects in detail to gain a better understanding how they e.g., affected glacial/interglacial carbon dioxide levels.