Events & Courses

Event details

Chemical weathering is the process whereby pristine minerals and rocks are broken down into different phases after exposure at the surface within the critical zone, through reactions with air, water or other substances. and later as sediment during transport. Silicate chemical weathering has been implicated as an important mechanism consuming atmospheric CO2. The Earth's climate is sensitive to the amount of greenhouse gas CO2. Chemical weathering is critical in buffering concentrations of CO2, which is important in keeping the Earth temperature within the range which is suitable for sustaining biological life and preventing a runaway 'Snowball Earth' scenario, or alternatively overheating and becoming an uninhabitable wilderness like Venus.

Recent studies are delving into the role of marine silicate weathering, chemical processes happening in shallow seafloor sediments, which remain under-constrained in global carbon cycling models. Furthermore, work on modern systems has highlighted the importance of carbonate weathering via the oxidation of sulphides in mudstones in releasing CO2 back to the atmosphere. In addition, during burial diagenesis precipitation of clay minerals can fix water mobile elements back into the sediment and release CO2, a process known as reverse weathering. The global carbon budget may also be affected by the burial of organic carbon in sedimentary depocentres. The relative significance of silicate weathering compared to organic carbon burial has yet to be resolved.

Much of what we know about chemical weathering in the modern world is derived from study of sediments and water in rivers whose chemistry is used to understand the dissolution of bedrock material upstream, whether that be in mountain source regions or floodplains. However, flux values estimated from sedimentary archives are often at odds with estimates derived from modern river water chemistry. It is not yet clear whether this discrepancy reflects either a significant error in the estimate of palaeo-weathering rates or if there are major long-term variations in the flux of chemical weathering, potentially linked to long-term climatic cycles.

At this conference we will bring together an interdisciplinary community of scientists working on modern systems, reconstructing palaeo-weathering, as well as understanding the process of mineral breakdown and how to quantify this. We aim to achieve a better synthetic understanding of how chemical weathering affects the Earth's surface and what the feedbacks are between chemical weathering and climate change. The topic is important for anthropogenically driven modern climate change. Enhanced chemical weathering might be a way of modulating rising atmospheric CO2 and an improved understanding of the processes involved is critical before any attempt at geo-engineering.

This conference is designed to have the different sub-disciplines of the weathering community talk to one another and derive a more holistic understanding of how chemical weathering occurs, how we can measure it and what the impact of it is on the global climate system. We will write up the results as a special publication of the GSL. In particular, we would like to reconcile estimates of modern chemical weathering fluxes with geologically-derived silicate weathering estimates from sedimentary sequences.

Key topics covered

• Review what is known about modern chemical weathering processes and fluxes
• Explore the proxies used for quantifying chemical weathering and how these might be improved
• Synthesise what is known about past chemical weathering processes and their impact on global climate evolution.

Target audience

The meeting is designed to engage a diverse and dynamic audience of professionals, researchers, and experts from various sectors. The expectation of this conference is to have the different sub-disciplines of the weathering community talk to one another and derive a more holistic understanding of how chemical weathering occurs, how we can measure it and what the impact of it is on the global climate system. The intention is to write up the results as a special publication of the GSL. In particular, we would like to reconcile estimates of modern chemical weathering fluxes with geologically-derived silicate weathering estimates from sedimentary sequences.

Convenors

Prof Peter Clift (University College London)

Prof Philip Pogge von Strandmann (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

Prof Kate Hendry (British Antarctic Survey)

Dr. Anne-Catherine Pierson-Wickmann (Université de Rennes)

Keynote speakers

Daniel Ibarra (Brown University)

Emily Stevenson (Cambridge)

David Wilson (UCL)

Sophie Opfergelt (UCLouvain)

Abstracts

Call for abstracts is open and will close Monday 2 December 2024. You can submit your abstract here.

Time & location

This conference will take place in person at Burlington House, Piccadilly and via Zoom.

Registration fees

* Voluntary contribution

Group Discounts

5–9 delegates: 10% off

10–14 delegates: 15% off

15 delegates or more: 20% off

Please contact [email protected] for any group bookings.