Silicate weathering and dry vs. wet runaway greenhouse scenarios

Details Silicate weathering and dry vs. wet runaway greenhouse scenarios Silicate weathering and dry vs. wet runaway greenhouse scenarios

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.u42b..01p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #U42B-01

Physics

5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060)

Scientific paper

One of the key habitability crises faced by a rocky or icy planet is the possibility of a runaway greenhouse. While the runaway greenhouse threshold is primarily governed by water vapor thermodynamics and radiative properties, the extent of irreversible loss of water can be strongly affected by the amount of CO2 that builds up in the atmosphere. In the "wet runaway" scenario, liquid water persists at the planet's surface, which means that if silicates are present in the planet's crust, there is the possibility of CO2 drawdown due to silicate weathering. I will discuss the problem of silicate weathering on a hot wet-runaway planet, and the factors governing the amount of CO2 that remains in the atmosphere. If large amounts of CO2 remain in the atmosphere, the affect on the cold trap concentration can strongly inhibit water loss. Recent planetary formation calculations suggest that rocky planets can form with a much greater water inventory than Earth, in which case it is not clear that exposed subaerial silicates would exist in sufficient quantity to permit conventional subaereal weathering. In this case, however, it is still possible that submarine weathering of ocean floor could limit the amount of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere. Geochemical calculations originally developed for study of the weathering cycle during a Snowball Earth will be used to estimate the importance of this process. Some remarks on the evolution pathways of icy moons and larger icy waterworlds, lacking significant silicates, will also be presented.

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