Quantification of the pre-eruptive CO2 budget of Neo-Tethyan magmas and their forcing on Early Cenozoic global climate

Magmatic CO2 emissions can affect the atmosphere composition, thereby driving long term global climate changes. Early Cenozoic climate trends are generally associated with changes in global silicate weathering related to the India-Asia convergence and collision, whereas changes in degassing from Neo-Tethyan magmatic arcs and their likely climatic effects are largely dismissed. Here, we characterize the petrography and measure the volatile content (e.g. CO2, H2O, F, Cl and S) of glassy, bubble-bearing and reheated melt inclusions within quartz, feldspar and pyroxene crystals from Early Cenozoic basalts, andesites and rhyolites from Ladakh (India), Tibet and Iran. Integrating our unprecedented measurements with modeling of the Neo-Tethyan geodynamics, we quantitatively assess the history of magmatic emissions from the Neo-Tethyan arcs and their contribution to Early Cenozoic climate changes. Assessing the Neo-Tethyan magmatic forcing of Early Cenozoic climate has major implications for our understanding of global volatile cycling on geological timescales.