RIFT-CC: Rifting as a driver of long-term Climate Change

地球的长期气候变化是因为二氧化碳水平在极长的时间内自然变化。数百万年来，火山活动的变化可能导致二氧化碳排放量的增加或减少，从而导致全球变暖或变冷。然而，有一种火山活动在我们的理解中一直缺失-大陆裂谷。这是一个大陆撕裂形成新海洋的过程，并被称为排放二氧化碳，但没有以有意义的方式包括在“地球系统”计算机模型中。在这个项目中，我们将绘制出裂谷的位置和二氧化碳排放量，并将其添加到最先进的全球模型中，然后我们可以用它来测试裂谷对长期气候变化的贡献。我们假设，一些裂缝将通过岩石风化反应来去除二氧化碳，而其他裂缝可能在过去驱动了温暖的时期，目前还不清楚。

Earth's long-term climate changes because carbon dioxide levels change naturally over extremely long timeframes. Over millions of years, changes in volcanic activity can result in higher or lower CO2 emissions, and can therefoe cause global warming or cooling. However one type of volcanism has been missing from our understanding here - continental rifting. This is a process in which continents rip apart to form new oceans, and is known to emit CO2, but is not included in 'Earth system' computer models in a meaningful way. In this project we will map out rift locations and CO2 emissions to add them to a state-of-the-art global model, which we can then use to test the contribution of rifting to long-term climate change. We hypothesise that some rifts will act to remove CO2 through rock weathering reactions, while others may have driven warm periods in the past which are currently not well understood.