Red Rocks: Using Color to Understand Climate Change

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https://eos.org/articles/red-rocks-using-color-to-understand-climate-change

Source: By Ria Mazumdar, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: A recent study on hematite formation during the Triassic may help predict the effects of climate change on contemporary monsoonal environments. ...conventional understanding attributes redness in the rock formations to diagenesis, a process of oxidation that occurs well after rocks are formed. ...Lepre and his colleagues examined part of a 518-meter-long rock core from the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, they obtained the wavelengths of various colors to find the concentration of hematite as well as grain size, which pushes the color to be more blue or red. (A more arid climate corresponds to a more reddish hue.) By looking at color cycles recorded in the rock formations, the team evaluated climate behavior during the Late Triassic, about 216 million to 213 million years ago.... 

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