Long-term climate change and the geochemical cycle of carbon

We study the interactions between the geochemical cycles of carbon and long-term changes in climate. Climate change is studied with a simple, zonally averaged energy balance climate model that includes the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide explicitly. The geochemical model balances the rate of consumption of carbon dioxide in silicate weathering against its release by volcanic and metamorphic processes. The silicate weathering rate is expressed locally as a function of temperature, carbon dioxide partial pressure, and runoff. The global weathering rate is calculated by integrating these quantities over the land area as a function of latitude. Carbon dioxide feedback stabilizes the climate system against a reduction in solar luminosity and may contribute to the preservation of equable climate on the early Earth, when solar luminosity was low. The system responds to reduced land area by increasing carbon dioxide partial pressure and warming the globe. Our model makes it possible to study the response of the system to changing latitudinal distribution of the continents. A concentration of land area at high latitudes leads to high carbon dioxide partial pressures and high global average temperature because weathering of high-latitude continents is slow. Conversely, concentration of the continents at low latitudes yields a cold globe and ice at low latitudes, a situation that appears to be representative of the late Precambrian glacial episode. This model is stable against ice albedo catastrophe even when the ice line occurs at low latitudes. In this it differs from energy balance models that lack the coupling to the geochemical cycle of carbon.