Scientists have confirmed that a “stabilizing feedback” on 100,000-year timescales keeps global temperatures in check.
Scientists have confirmed that a “stabilizing feedback” on 100,000-year timescales keeps global temperatures in check.
The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating.
Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.
Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Caption:A study by MIT researchers confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range. (Credits:Image: Christine Daniloff, MIT; NASA)
