Climatic geomorphology

Atolls like Atafu in Tokelau in the Pacific Ocean are landforms associated to tropical climate. No atoll exists outside the tropics.

Climatic geomorphology is the study of the role of climate in shaping landforms and the earth-surface processes.[1] An approach used in climatic geomorphology is to study relict landforms to infer ancient climates.[1] Being often concerned about past climates climatic geomorphology considered sometimes to be an aspect of historical geology.[2] Since landscape features in one region might have evolved under climates different from those of the present, studying climatically disparate regions might help understand present-day landscapes. For example, Julius Büdel studied both cold-climate processes in Svalbard and weathering processes in tropical India to understand the origin of the relief of Central Europe, which he argued was a palimpsest of landforms formed at different times and under different climates.[3]

  1. ^ a b Gutiérrez, Mateo; Gutiérrez, Francisco (2013). "Climatic Geomorphology". Treatise on Geomorphology. Vol. 13. pp. 115–131.
  2. ^ Gutiérrez, Mateo, ed. (2005). "Chapter 1 Climatic geomorphology". Developments in Earth Surface Processes. Vol. 8. pp. 3–32. doi:10.1016/S0928-2025(05)80051-3. ISBN 978-0-444-51794-4.
  3. ^ Migoń, Piotr (2006). "Büdel, J. 1982: Climatic geomorphology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Translation of Klima-geomorphologie, Berlin-Stuttgart: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1977.)". Progress in Physical Geography. 30 (1): 99–103. doi:10.1191/0309133306pp473xx. S2CID 129512489.