Global chemical weathering dominated by continental arcs since the mid-Palaeozoic

Earth’s plate-tectonic activity regulates the carbon cycle and, hence, climate, via volcanic outgassing and silicate-rock weathering. Mountain building, arc–continent collisions and clustering of continents in the tropics have all been invoked as controlling the weathering flux, with arcs also actin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature geoscience 2021-09, Vol.14 (9), p.690-696
Main Authors: Gernon, Thomas M., Hincks, Thea K., Merdith, Andrew S., Rohling, Eelco J., Palmer, Martin R., Foster, Gavin L., Bataille, Clément P., Müller, R. Dietmar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/2738
704/2151/209
704/2151/210
704/2151/213
Bayesian analysis
Carbon
Carbon cycle
Carbon dioxide
Chemical weathering
Clustering
Drawdown
Earth
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth surface
Earth System Sciences
Fluxes
Geochemistry
Geological time
Geology
Geophysics/Geodesy
Length
Mountains
Ocean floor
Orogeny
Outgassing
Palaeozoic
Paleozoic
Plate tectonics
Probabilistic analysis
Probability theory
Silicates
Stability
Surface temperature
Tropical environments
Weathering
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Summary:Earth’s plate-tectonic activity regulates the carbon cycle and, hence, climate, via volcanic outgassing and silicate-rock weathering. Mountain building, arc–continent collisions and clustering of continents in the tropics have all been invoked as controlling the weathering flux, with arcs also acting as a major contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, these processes have largely been considered in isolation when in reality they are all tightly coupled. To properly account for interactions among these processes, and the inherent multi-million-year time lags at play in the Earth system, we need to characterize their complex interdependencies. Here we analyse these interdependencies over the past 400 million years using a Bayesian network to identify primary relationships, time lags and drivers of the global chemical weathering signal. We find that the length of continental volcanic arcs—the fastest-eroding surface features on Earth—exerts the strongest control on global chemical weathering fluxes. We propose that the rapid drawdown of carbon dioxide tied to arc weathering stabilizes surface temperatures over geological time, contrary to the widely held view that this stability is achieved mainly by a delicate balance between weathering of the seafloor and the continental interiors. Earth’s surface temperature is stabilized by the drawdown of CO 2 owing to weathering of continental arcs, whose length is shown to be a primary control on global weathering fluxes, according to a probabilistic analysis of interdependencies.
ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/s41561-021-00806-0