How closed is the water cycle?
To what extent does volcanism influence climate?
What an interesting article, Kenneth!
Thank you very much for the link!
I am afraid that we ignore much more than we know about the effects of volcanism in the current climate.
But I insist on a specific question: how much juvenile water (of magmatic origin) do aerial volcanoes emit each year? Is there any reliable estimate to the repect? Some range of magnitude?
Depends on what scale you are considering (time and distance). From a total water cycle perspective there is no new water on earth. It is all recycled in various forms.
Any typical water cycle picture often only has evaporation off the oceans, falling as rain/snow (precipitation) flows down the rivers and back into the ocean again. Very simplistic. It ignores the precipitation that percolates into the earth to become groundwater that contributes to baseflow in rivers (days to years), deep groundwater cycles (years to millennium) that can get down into large alluvial aquifers or fractured rock aquifers that can get into deep sedimentary basins that can get into rocks that get subducted into the mantle to be extruded as volcanoes, water vapour etc. So once again it is a scale thing. How long have you got?
Some may argue what about meteorites bring new water earth. It can be calculated. I suppose someone has done it.
Hello again!
I suppose that the water content emitted by the volcanoes of subduction zones will contain water from both: the "primordial" magma and the earth's crust fused by the "friction" of the converging plates, that is to say: a water that has never been in the atmosphere (a brand new water that opens in the hydrological cycle) and other water that has belonged to a hydrological cycle before its aquifer entered a subduction phase. To distinguish between both waters seems to me nearly impossible.
But the water vapor emanating from volcanoes located in divergent plates or those located in hot spots, I suppose that this water is totally juvenile, it “premieres” in the atmospheric hydrological cycle.
I am asking about this water, the amount of this water emissions. It is to know to what extent the hydrological cycle is closed (or not).
The problem I see, to be able to answer this question, is that the main submarine volcano is 40,000 miles long and it is under water some miles deep in the ocean. - Not an easy task to solve at all!
The subject seems very interesting to me.
Thank you very much for your helpful answers and information.
Best regards,
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change