Chemical weathering of silicate minerals removes CO2 from the atmosphere and therefore provides a key feedback that regulates Earth's climate over long time scales. The rate at which this process proceeds depends on the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, temperature, topography, rainfall, and vegetation; the interaction of all of these factors has made it difficult to establish their separate contributions.
West et al. present a compilation of chemical and physical erosion rates in small river catchments and interpret those data with a model for quantitatively discriminating between the controls on silicate weathering by erosion, runoff, and temperature/vegetation in modern environments. They find that silicate weathering is proportional to mineral supply, which limits weathering at lower erosion rates; at higher erosion rates, climatic factors such as temparature and runoff-related kinetics control the rate of weathering. — HJS
Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 10.1016/j.epsl.2005.03.020 (2005).
