EGU21-5262
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5262
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Cenozoic advance of the East Asian monsoon promoted weathering of the magnesium-rich southern China upper crust and its significance for global geochemical cycles of carbon and magnesium

Yibo Yang1, Albert Galy2, Xiaomin Fang1, Christian France-Lanord2, Shiming Wan3, Rongsheng Yang1, Jian Zhang1, Ran Zhang4, Song Yang1, Yunfa Miao5, Yudong Liu1, and Chengcheng Ye1
Yibo Yang et al.
  • 1Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (yangyibo@itpcas.ac.cn)
  • 2Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques, UMR7358, CNRS - Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
  • 3Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • 4Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • 5Northwest institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Oligocene-Miocene boundary climatic reorganization linked to the northward advance of the East Asian monsoon in subtropical China is a potentially important but poorly constrained atmospheric CO2 consumption process. Here, we performed a first-order estimate of the difference in CO2 consumption induced by silicate chemical weathering and organic carbon burial in subtropical China related to this monsoon advance. Our results show that an increase in CO2 consumption by silicate weathering varies between ~1% and 15% of the current global continental silicate sink with an ~60% contribution of Mg-silicate weathering but a negligible increase in the global organic carbon burial (<3.5%) since the late Oligocene. The results highlight the significant role of weathering of the Mg-rich upper continental crust in East China that would also contribute significantly to the rise in the Mg content of the ocean. Our study thus suggests that the uplift of the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau can lead to indirect modification of the global carbon and magnesium cycles by changing the regional hydrological cycle in areas of East Asia that are tectonically less active in addition to the well studied direct impact of high erosion-induced atmospheric CO2 consumption along the orogenic belt in South Asia.

How to cite: Yang, Y., Galy, A., Fang, X., France-Lanord, C., Wan, S., Yang, R., Zhang, J., Zhang, R., Yang, S., Miao, Y., Liu, Y., and Ye, C.: Cenozoic advance of the East Asian monsoon promoted weathering of the magnesium-rich southern China upper crust and its significance for global geochemical cycles of carbon and magnesium, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5262, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5262, 2021.

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