Volcanoes, carbon dioxide emitted

The most important greenhouse gas at present is not carbon dioxide but water vapour, simply because there is so much of it in the atmosphere (Box 6.1). Volcanoes emit large amounts of water vapour (c. 1 Ttyr-1 Skelton et al. 2003), but even so this flux is minor compared to evaporation from the oceans and evapotranspiration from plants (c.0.25% see Fig. 3.12). In a warmer world, such as during the Cretaceous, the atmosphere can hold more water vapour. However, the extent of the warming caused by extra atmospheric water vapour is difficult to predict because clouds also exhibit an albedo effect, and the balance between the greenhouse and albedo effects varies with cloud type and altitude (Lovelock Whitfield 1982). 

Where, then, did our modern atmosphere come from The answer seems to be volcanoes. As well as emitting sulphurous fumes (which would have precipitated in the rain), volcanic gases include nitrogen and carbon dioxide (in about the right balance), tiny amounts of neon, and almost no methane, ammonia or oxygen. 

Equator for a time.3 This would have meant that all the land masses on Earth were free of ice. To understand why this should matter, we must look at what happens when rock is exposed to the air, or to warm oceans with plentiful carbon dioxide. Rock can be eroded by dissolved carbon dioxide, which is weakly acidic. As a result of this reaction, carbon dioxide is lost from the air and becomes petrified in carbonates. But when glaciers form over land, the underlying rock becomes insulated from the air by the thick layer of ice. This means that the rate of rock erosion by carbon dioxide is cut to a fraction and the carbon dioxide stays in the air. In fact, in such a situation, carbon dioxide actually builds up in the air, because it is also emitted more or less continuously from active volcanoes. 

It is generally believed that the solar system condensed out of an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, referred to as the primordial solar nebula, about 4.6 billion years ago. The atmospheres of the Earth and the other terrestrial planets, Venus and Mars, are thought to have formed as a result of the release of trapped volatile compounds from the planet itself. The early atmosphere of the Earth is believed to have been a mixture of carbon dioxide (C02), nitrogen (N2), and water vapor (H20), with trace amounts of hydrogen (H2), a mixture similar to that emitted by present-day volcanoes. 

When sulphur dioxide alone is passed over carbon at a red heat the latter undergoes partial oxidation, the products being carbon monoxide, carbon oxysulphide and carbon disulphide no oxysulphide is obtained at a white heat.2 Both carbon monoxide and methane are oxidised by sulphur dioxide at high temperatures with formation of sulphur. It has been suggested that volcanic sulphur may, in part, be formed by the reduction of sulphur dioxide by methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, all of which are emitted by volcanoes.4... 

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