• Question: How will climate change affect the geology of our planet?

    Asked by zaina to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 8 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      Wow, this is a big question Zaina! It’s usually the geology that affects climate, we don’t think of it the other way round so much.
      But there are two main things I can think of:
      – As we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, more also gets dissolved in the oceans, making oceans more sour (a bit like the sour taste in soda water). Sour water dissolves sea shells which are made out of carbonate, so we will get much fewer of these creating carbonate rocks on the bottom of the sea. A lot of the rocks around us are in fact compressed small shells – lime stone for example! So there will probably be less limestone in future geology.
      – climate change will change wind and rain patterns, so we’ll get erosion (the washing away of rocks and soil) in different places than previously. This will make our world look very different!

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      Great question and I’ve not got a good answer. but you can see that changes in the climate have happened in the past by looking at changes in the earths make up so its fair to say the geology will change with a changing climate. The climate is likely to affect what plants grow etc. and that over time is likely to affect what gets laid down in the soil and earths. But I’ve no expereince in this field and this is specultation on my behalf.

    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 9 Jun 2012:

      Good question zaina, but I don’t really have any expertise in this area – I think Sarah has answered much better than I could have guessed!

Comments