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Geochemistry

A glacial hangover

Nature volume 458, pages 417–418 (2009)Cite this article

The marine geochemical budget of some solutes does not add up. A test case shows that at least part of the reason may lie in the timescale over which continental weathering recovers from glaciations.

On page 493 of this issue, Vance et al.1 describe how they have tackled one of the puzzles in geochemistry: the fact that current tallies of the sources and sinks of certain elements and isotopes in the ocean don't match the observed rates of change. Vance et al. consider the case of strontium isotopes, where the isotopic ratio of 87Sr/86Sr has been evolving at a faster rate than it should, given the known sources and sinks in the oceans. Their conclusion is that the imbalance lies on the river-input side of the equation, and they propose that estimates based on modern river data do not adequately account for the recovery from recent ice ages.

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Figure 1: Earth moving.

P. A. SOUDERS/CORBIS

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Louis A. Derry is in the Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA. lad9@cornell.edu,

    Louis A. Derry

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  1. Louis A. Derry
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Derry, L. A glacial hangover. Nature 458, 417–418 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458417a

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