Adding crushed rocks to soils absorbs atmospheric carbon and curb global warming
Summary Enhanced Rock Weathering involves the application of pulverized rocks to soils. It is one of the proposed ways of reducing effects of global warming. The Paris Agreement on climate change adopted the limiting of the increase in global warming to well below 2 o C. Quick and efficient removal of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is thus an urgent requirement to achieve the set targets. The natural chemical weathering of rocks (a process involving the reaction of atmospheric CO 2 with water to form a weak carbonic acid (H 2 CO 3 ), and the attack of silicate and carbonate minerals by the carbonic acid) normally absorbs only 0.3% of the atmospheric CO 2 . Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) - the modification by acceleration of the removal of atmospheric CO 2 by the application of pulverized magnesium-rich silicate rocks (mostly basalts) and calcium-rich rocks (carbonates) - is one of the cost-effective methods of extracting CO 2 from the atmosphere. A recent study has shown that ERW has the