Journal article
Rock organic carbon oxidation CO2 release offsets silicate weathering sink
- Abstract:
- Mountain uplift and erosion have regulated the balance of carbon between Earth’s interior and atmosphere, where prior focus has been placed on the role of silicate mineral weathering in CO2 drawdown and its contribution to the stability of Earth’s climate in a habitable state. However, weathering can also release CO2 as rock organic carbon (OCpetro) is oxidized at the near surface; this important geological CO2 flux has remained poorly constrained. We use the trace element rhenium in combination with a spatial extrapolation model to quantify this flux across global river catchments. We find a CO2 release of megatons of carbon annually from weathering of OCpetro in near-surface rocks, rivalling or even exceeding the CO2 drawdown by silicate weathering at the global scale. Hotspots of CO2 release are found in mountain ranges with high uplift rates exposing fine-grained sedimentary rock, such as the eastern Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. Our results demonstrate that OCpetro is far from inert and causes weathering in regions to be net sources or sinks of CO2. This raises questions, not yet fully studied, as to how erosion and weathering drive the long-term carbon cycle and contribute to the fine balance of carbon fluxes between the atmosphere, biosphere and lithosphere.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41586-023-06581-9
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature More from this journal
- Volume:
- 623
- Issue:
- 7986
- Pages:
- 329-333
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2023-10-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-08-30
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1476-4687
- ISSN:
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0028-0836
- Pmid:
-
37794192
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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1529219
- Local pid:
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pubs:1529219
- Deposit date:
-
2023-11-10
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Zondervan et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Authors. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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