Mike J. Bickle

• University of Cambridge

The Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwaddy) and Salween (Thanlwin) globally rank among the largest rivers for supplying dissolved and particulate material to the ocean. Along with the Sittaung and Kaladan rivers they have societal importance to Myanmar in terms water sources and food production. Despite their importance for global biogeochemical cycles and the ~50...

The Tso Morari Crystalline Complex (TMC), eastern Ladakh, is marked by the presence of eclogites as boudins and lenses within the Puga Formation. These eclogites are composed of garnet, omphacite, amphibole, phengite, glaucophane, quartz, and iron oxide, with rare coesite inclusions in garnet reflecting ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic characteristic...

The Tso Morari Crystalline Complex (TMC), eastern Ladakh, is marked by the presence of eclogites as boudins and lenses within the Puga Formation. These eclogites are composed of garnet, omphacite, amphibole, phengite, glaucophane, quartz, and iron oxide, with rare coesite inclusions in garnet reflecting ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic characteristic...

Fault zones have the potential to act as leakage pathways through low permeability structural seals in geological reservoirs. Faults may facilitate migration of groundwater contaminants and stored anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO $_2$ ), where the waste fluids would otherwise remain securely trapped. We present an analytical model that describes th...

We examine the effects of horizontally layered heterogeneities on the spreading of two-phase gravity currents in a porous medium, with application to numerous environmental flows, most notably geological carbon sequestration. Heterogeneities, which are ubiquitous within geological reservoirs, affect the large-scale propagation of two-phase flows th...

The weathering of carbonate rocks with sulfuric acid releases carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere, offsetting the CO2 drawdown from carbonic acid weathering of silicates thought to regulate global climate. Quantifying CO2 release from sulfuric acid weathering requires the partitioning of riverine sulfate between its two main sources: sedimentary...

We examine the effects of horizontally layered heterogeneities on the spreading of two-phase gravity currents in a porous medium, with application to numerous environmental flows, most notably geological carbon sequestration. Geological heterogeneities, which are omnipresent within all reservoirs, affect the large-scale propagation of such flows th...

Significance Large rivers transport water and sediment to floodplains and oceans, supplying the nutrients that sustain life. They also transport carbon, removed from the atmosphere during mineral dissolution reactions, which is thought to provide a key negative climate feedback on long timescales. We demonstrate that the (million-year) carbon flux...

Upscaling the effect of heterogeneities in porous media is crucial for macroscopic flow predictions, with widespread applications in energy and environmental settings. In this study, we derive expressions for the upscaled flow properties of a porous medium with a vertical heterogeneity, using a combination of asymptotic analysis and numerical simul...

Plain Language Summary To limit global warming to 2°C, it is likely that large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) will need to be stored underground. A significant fraction of the total possible storage space for CO2 is in salt water reservoirs, kilometers beneath the surface. It is important that once the CO2 has been injected underground, it is secu...

Significance Pyrite is oxidized during weathering to form dissolved sulfate that is carried to the ocean by rivers. This process is thought to incorporate atmospheric O 2 -derived oxygen; geologically preserved sulfate has thus been proposed to directly trace past O 2 isotope compositions. However, this mechanism has not been thoroughly tested in m...

Analysis of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios and modelling of formation water, injection water and produced water compositions from the CO2CRC Otway Research Facility in Victoria, Australia are used to test tracer behaviour and response in push-pull experiments. Such experiments are an essential pre-requisite to understanding the controls imposed by reservoir hete...

Calcium isotope ratios in epidote from epidosites in ophiolites of varying Phanerozoic ages have 44Ca/40Ca ratios that are lower by 0.1 to 0.6‰ relative to typical mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal fluids. Epidosites are inferred to form in high-temperature parts of seafloor hydrothermal systems at temperatures above 300 °C and where fluid fluxes are hi...

For the purpose of geological carbon storage, it is necessary to understand the long-term effects of introducing CO2 and sulfur-species into saline aquifers. CO2 stripped from the flue gas during the carbon capture process may contain trace SO2 and H2S and it may be economically beneficial to inject S-bearing CO2 rather than costly purified CO2. Fu...

Rationale: Li and Mg isotopes are increasingly used as a combined tool within the geosciences. However, established methods require separate sample purification protocols utilising several column separation procedures. This study presents a single-step cation exchange method for quantitative separation of trace levels of Li and Mg from multiple sa...

This paper presents fundamental analysis of the injection and release of fluid into porous media or geological reservoirs saturated by a different fluid undergoing a background flow, and tests the predictions using analogue laboratory experiments. The study reveals new results important for an understanding of the transport of hazardous contaminant...

The dissolution of CO2 into formation brines and the subsequent reactions of the CO2-charged brines with reservoir minerals are two key processes likely to increase the security of geological carbon-dioxide storage. These processes will be dependent on the permeability structure and mineral compositions of the reservoirs, but there is limited obser...

Storage of anthropogenic CO2 in geological formations relies on impermeable caprocks as the primary seal preventing buoyant super-critical CO2 escaping. Although natural CO2 reservoirs demonstrate that CO2 may be stored safely for millions of years, uncertainty remains in predicting how caprocks will react with acid CO2-bearing brines. This uncerta...

Storage of anthropogenic CO2 in geological formations relies on a caprock as the primary seal preventing buoyant super-critical CO2 escaping. Although natural CO2 reservoirs demonstrate that CO2 may be stored safely for millions of years, uncertainty remains in predicting how caprocks will react with CO2-bearing brines. This uncertainty poses a sig...

Supplementary Figures 1-6, Supplementary Tables 1-4 and Supplementary References

Migration of CO2 through storage reservoirs can be monitored using time lapse seismic reflection surveys. At the Sleipner Field, injected CO2 is distributed throughout nine layers within the reservoir. These layers are too thin to be seismically resolvable by direct measurement of the separation between reflections from the top and bottom of each l...

In order to assess the long-term security of geologic carbon storage, it is crucial to study the geochemical behavior of sulfur in reservoirs that store CO2. Fossil fuel combustion may produce mixtures of carbon dioxide and sulfur gases, and the geochemical effects of sulfur–CO2 cosequestration are poorly understood. This study examines sulfur mine...

At Green River CO2 and CO2- SO4- charged fluids leak to surface up the Little Grand Wash fault, migrating into overlying aquifers. Drill-core collected in a 2012 drilling campaign, 90 m away from the fault trace, documents bleaching related to these migrating fluids. The mineralogy and Sr, S, O and C-isotope compositions of two 6-9 cm thick bleache...

Although agriculturally accelerated soil erosion is implicated in the unsustainable environmental degradation of mountain environments, such as in the Himalaya, the effects of land use can be challenging to quantify in many mountain settings because of the high and variable natural background rates of erosion. In this study, we present new long-ter...

The dissolution of silicate minerals by CO2–rich fluids and the subsequent precipitation of CO2 as carbonate minerals represent a means of permanently storing anthropogenic CO2 waste products in a solid and secure form. Modelling the progression of these reactions is hindered by our poor understanding of the rates of mineral dissolution-precipitati...

The Irrawaddy and Salween rivers in Myanmar deliver water fluxes to the ocean equal to ~70% of the Ganges–Brahmaputra river system. Together these systems are thought to deliver about half the dissolved load from the tectonically active Himalayan–Tibetan orogen. Previously very little data was available on the dissolved load and isotopic compositio...

We review new and published analyses of river waters, bedloads and their constituent minerals from the Dhauli Ganga and Alaknanda, headwaters of the Ganges in Garhwal, and the Marsyandi in Nepal and their tributaries. These data are used to discriminate between the inputs of major cations and Sr from silicate and carbonate sources. Methods of estim...

ScienceDirect 1876-6102 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GHGT-12 Abstract Understanding the long-term response of CO 2 injected into porous reservoirs is one...

Although agriculturally accelerated soil erosion is implicated in the unsustainable environmental degradation of mountain environments, such as in the Himalaya, the effects of land use can be difficult to quantify in many mountain settings because of the high and variable natural background rates of erosion. In this study, we present new long-term...

Understanding the geochemical behaviour of gaseous and supercritical carbon dioxide stored in geological reservoirs, over a range of timescales, is crucial for quantifying leakage risk and the geochemical evolution of the stored CO2 through the life of an individual storage site (e.g. Bickle, 2009). Dissolution of the stored CO2 into reservoir brin...

Natural CO2 systems provide useful analogues for the longer-term processes which might take place in anthropogenic geological storage of CO 2. They are capable of providing information on the extent of dissolution of CO2 in formation brines, the nature of the fluid-mineral reactions, the kinetics of the fluid-mineral reactions, the behavior of seal...

The silicon isotopic composition (δSi30) of the headwaters of the Ganges River, in the Himalaya, ranged from +0.49±0.01‰ to +2.17±0.04‰ at dissolved silicon (DSi) concentrations of 38 to 239 μM. Both the concentration and isotopic composition of DSi in the tributaries increased between the highest elevations to where the Ganges leaves the Himalayas...

Spectacular celestine geodes occur in a Jurassic peri-evaporitic sequence (Ardon Formation) exposed in Makhtesh Ramon, southern Israel. The geodes are found only in one specific location: adjacent to an intrusive contact with a Lower Cretaceous basaltic dyke. Celestine, well known in sedimentary associations worldwide and considered as a low temper...

The validity of using the 40Ar/39Ar system for thermochronology relies on the assumption that the source mineral is surrounded by a grain boundary reservoir defined by an effective 40Ar concentration of zero. However, the presence of extraneous 40Ar (AreAre) in metamorphic rocks shows that this assumption is invalid for a significant number of case...

The weathering of sulfur bearing minerals forms the largest source of sulfate to the ocean. The nature of the minerals being weathered, either sulfate minerals (e.g. gypsum), or sulfide minerals (e.g. oxidative weathering of pyrite) impacts the flux of sulfate to the ocean, the isotope composition of this flux, and is one of the long-term controls...

We present a semi-empirical thermodynamic model with uncertainties that encompasses the full range of compositions in H2O–CO2–NaCl mixtures in the range of 10–380 °C and 1–3500 bars. For binary H2O–CO2 mixtures, the activity–composition model is built from solubility experiments. The parameters describing interactions between H2O and CO2 are indepe...

[1] Mobilization of contaminants by CO2-charged brines is one concern relating to injection of CO2 as part of carbon capture and storage projects. This study monitors the mobility of trace metals in an exhumed CO2-charged aquifer near the town of Green River, Utah (USA), where CO2-charged brines have bleached red sandstones, and concentrated trace...

Geological carbon storage involving injection of CO2 into geological formations is seen as a critical strategy to manage anthropogenic carbon emissions while society develops carbon-free energy sources. Mitigating the climatic impacts requires the stored carbon to be retained for at least 10 k.y.,

Knowledge of the exhumation of the Lesser Himalaya (LH) is important to the development of models of crustal deformation and to testing whether erosion of the LH has contributed to changes in ocean geochemistry, (e.g. Pierson-Wickmann et al 2000; Chesley et al 2000). Since most of the LH is unmetamorphosed, using bedrock to determine the timing of...

A thermodynamic model for phase equilibria in the H2O-CO2-NaCl system

a b s t r a c t Groundwater chemical fluxes from the Pingtung Plain in SW Taiwan to the ocean were determined by analysing waters from 43 wells at varying depths through a 237 m deep window across the Pingtung Plain, for major dissolved cations, anions, dissolved SiO 2 , and stable isotopic composition of O and H, and computing their subsurface wat...

CO2 sequestration is regarded as an important strategy for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Both the nature and rate of fluid–mineral reactions in CO2–water–rock systems are crucial, yet poorly constrained, parameters in understanding the fate of CO2 injected in geological formations. This study models reactions and reaction rates in an exhume...

Modelling the progress of geochemical processes in CO2 storage sites is frustrated by uncertainties in the rates of CO2 flow and dissolution, and in the rates and controlling mechanisms of fluid-mineral reactions that stabilise the CO2 in geological reservoirs. Dissolution of CO2 must be controlled by the complexities of 2-phase flow of CO2 and for...

This paper presents the initial results of a scientific drilling project to recover core and pressurized fluid samples from a natural CO2 reservoir, near the town of Green River, Utah. The drilling targeted a stacked sequence of CO2-charged Jurassic sandstone reservoirs and caprocks, situated adjacent to a CO2-degassing normal fault. This site has...

The Cenozoic sedimentary succession of Bangladesh provides an archive of Himalayan erosion. However, its potential as an archive is currently hampered by a poor lithostratigaphic framework with limited age control. We focus on the Hatia Trough of the Bengal Basin and the adjacent fold belt of the Chittagong Hill Tracts which forms the outermost par...

Secure storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) in geological reservoirs requires predicting gas–water–rock interactions over millennial timescales. Noble gases and carbon isotope measurements can be used to shed light on the nature of competing dissolution—precipitation processes over different timescales, from the fast dissolution of gaseous...

Red sandstones near Green River, Utah (United States), have been bleached by diagenetic fluids. Field relationships, modeling, fluid inclusion and isotopic data suggest that the causal fluid was a CO2-charged brine, distinguishing this site from hydrocarbon-related bleaching elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau. Mineralogical and chemical profiles fro...

Carbon capture and geological storage represents a potential means of managing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Understanding the performance of faults, as either barriers or conduits to the flow of carbon dioxide, is crucial for predicting the long-term integrity of geological storage sites. Of concern are the relative importance of geochemical...

Carbon capture and geological storage represents a potential means of managing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Understanding the role of faults, as either barriers or conduits to the flow of carbon dioxide, is crucial for predicting the long-term integrity of geological storage sites. Of particular concern is the influence of geochemical reactio...

Reactions between CO2 injected into geological formations and aquifer minerals may lead to permanently storage of the CO2 as carbonate minerals, or cause leakage via corrosion of caprock and well seals [1]. Reactive transport models aimed at predicting the long term fate of injected CO2 suffer from a poor knowledge of kinetic reaction rate paramete...

Dissolution of CO2 in brines and reactions of the acid brines ultimately dissolving silicate minerals and precipitating carbonate minerals are the prime long-term mechanisms for stabilising the light supercritical CO2 in geological carbon storage. However the rates of dissolution are very uncertain as they are likely to depend on the heterogeneity...

Argon decoupled from its parent K (40ArE) is a ubiquitous feature of metamorphic rocks, specifically those which have formed under high pressure conditions. The factors controlling its presence are not clearly understood. Traditionally, 40ArE is interpreted as detrimental to geochronological studies, where the aim is to measure meaningful 40Ar/39Ar...

Time-lapse, three-dimensional (3D) seismic surveys have imaged an accumulation of injected CO2 adjacent to the Sleipner field in the North Sea basin. The changing pattern of reflectivity suggests that CO2 accumulates within a series of interbedded sandstones and mudstones beneath a thick caprock of mudstone. Nine reflective horizons within the rese...

Tracing groundwater offshore has resulted in a wide range of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) estimates for specific marine locations, but complementary, similarly-focused studies measuring potential throughput on land are few. We analysed the waters from 43 wells at varying depths through a 264 m window in the Pingtung Plain for major dissolv...

The CO2 plume at Sleipner has been imaged on 3D seismic surveys as a series of bright sub-horizontal reflections. Nine discrete CO2 rich layers are inferred to have accumulated between a series of intra-reservoir mudstones beneath a substantial reservoir topseal. Time-lapse changes in reflectivity and in the lateral extent of these layers provide u...

The hypothesis that orogeny and the consequent uplift and erosion of continental crust cause global cooling by changing the feedback between temperature and silicate chemical weathering rate is longstanding but unresolved. Testing this hypothesis is frustrated by the difficulty of distinguishing the contributions of carbonate and silicate sources t...

Dissolved silicon (DSi) in rivers currently represents ~85% of DSi input to the ocean, giving it a significant influence over the average stable isotopic composition (δ30Si) of seawater. In the modern ocean, both the average δ30Si of silica exported to the sediments and of deep water DSi should therefore be very close to the average value of the ri...

Eclogite facies metamorphic rocks provide critical information pertaining to the timing of continental collision in zones of plate convergence. Despite being amongst Earth's best studied orogens, little is understood about the rates of Alpine metamorphism within the Eastern Alps. We present LA-MC-ICPMS and ID-TIMS U-Pb ages of metamorphic allanite...

We analysed the water chemistry of a 6-yr time series of the Liwu River, Taiwan, as well as spot samples of tributaries and groundwater. In this steep and well-drained catchment impacted by typhoon events, the river carries a high dissolved load (average of 320 mg/L) dominated by Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ (73 Eq% and 21 Eq% of the cationic charge), and SO 4...

Ocean drilling is the most successful long-standing international collaboration in the geosciences. The invaluable archive of samples and data that has been built underpins our understanding of the Earth, its surface environment and climate. Planning the next phase is at an advanced stage.

The burial of particulate organic carbon (POC) in marine sediments and carbonate deposition induced by excess alkalinity in the ocean due to continental silicate weathering represent the geological sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) while its sources have to be the degassing of solid Earth. Superimposed on this carbon cycle at million year t...

We analyzed the water chemistry of a 6-yr time series of the Liwu River, Taiwan, as well as spot samples of tributaries and groundwater. In this steep and well-drained catchment impacted by typhoon events, the Liwu river carries high dissolved load (average of 320 mg/L) dominated by Ca2+ and Mg2+ (73 Eq% and 21 Eq% of the cationic charge), and SO42...

Jin, Z. D., Bickle, M. J., Chapman, H. J., Yu, J., An, Z., Wang, S. & Greaves, M. J. 2010: Ostracod Mg/Sr/Ca and 87Sr/86Sr geochemistry from Tibetan lake sediments: Implications for early to mid-Pleistocene Indian monsoon and catchment weathering. Boreas, 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2010.00184.x. ISSN 0300-9483 Lacustrine sediment serves as a valuable arch...

The oceanic mass balance of calcium (Ca) is defined by a balance between the inputs (rivers and hydrothermal) and outputs (bulk carbonate) of Ca. Large rivers were analyzed for Ca isotope ratios (44Ca/42Ca, expressed as δ$\frac{44}{42}$ Ca) to investigate the source and cycling of riverine Ca, and to add an isotopic mass balance constraint to the o...

Riverine transport of chemical weathering products is one of the most efficient mechanisms of mass transfer at the Earth surface. It is a key process in global biogeochemical cycles, especially in the surface carbon cycle. Chemical weathering reactions neutralize atmospheric CO2, the main weathering agent on Earth at present, to produce alkalinity...