Our planet has experienced dramatic climate shifts throughout its history, oscillating between freezing “icehouse” periods and warm “greenhouse” states.
Scientists have long linked these climate changes to fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, new research reveals the source of this carbon — and the driving forces behind it — are far more complex than previously thought.
In fact, the way tectonic plates move about Earth’s surface plays a major, previously underappreciated role in climate. Carbon doesn’t just emerge where tectonic plates meet. The places where tectonic plates pull away from each other are significant, too.
Our new study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, sheds light on how exactly Earth’s plate tectonics have helped shape the global climate over the past 540 million years.
Peering deep within the carbon cycle
At the boundaries where Earth’s tectonic plates converge, we get chains of volcanoes known as volcanic arcs. Melting associated with these volcanoes unlocks carbon that’s been trapped inside rocks for thousands of years, bringing it to Earth’s surface.
Historically, it’s been thought that these volcanic arcs were the primary culprits of injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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