Estimators of the impact of climate change in salt weathering of cultural heritage

Abstract

Changes induced by climate change in salt weathering of built cultural heritage are estimated in different ways, but generally as a function of phase changes phenomena of two common salts, sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. We propose to use not only these salts, but also other common salts as calcium sulfate, or mixtures of chlorides, sulfates, and nitrates of sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Comparisons between the predicted changes in salt weathering obtained for single salts and for combinations of different salts are presented. We applied the proposed methodology to 41 locations uniformly distributed in France. The results show that estimations of actual and evolution of future weathering depend on the selected salt or combination of salts. According to our results, when using a combination of different salts, weathering evolution is less favorable (more damage in the future) than when using a single salt.