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Mr. Weather’s World is a weekly video series bringing you interesting and reliable information about the Earth Sciences, Space Weather, and Climate Change. Tune in each week for exciting new content with host and meteorologist Curt Silverwood (Millersville University Alum).

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One of the most abundant non-renewable resources is coal. Coal is an organic sedimentary rock that is found primarily in Carboniferous strata - meaning, a lot of coal is found in rock layers from 359 and 299 Million Years ago.

Coal formed in very warm swamps over millions of years ago.

As plants died in still swampy water they piled up. The lack of atmospheric oxygen under water prevented plant material from rotting quickly so new plants grew on top of the dead ones. Eventually, a layer of compacted organic (or plant) material called peat accumulated.

Peat can be used for heating, but it usually releases a lot of smoke since it has a high concentration of water and impurities.

As peat becomes buried by other layers of sediment it loses gas and moisture which leads to a high concentration of carbon with time, changing into lignite coal. After being buried by more sediments, lignite coal becomes bituminous coal, or soft coal.

Bituminous coal is compact, dull black, and brittle. It provides a lot of heat energy but releases sulfur which can pollute the environment.

As time goes on, with enough heat and pressure applied to buried layers of bituminous coal, shiny black, anthracite coal forms. Anthracite is considered to be a metamorphic rock. Anthracite coal has the highest amount of carbon of all forms of coal and burns cleaner than bituminous coal.

How do places like Pennsylvania have so much coal when it isn’t a very warm environment?

During the Carboniferous time period, Pennsylvania was near the equator! All the modern day continents were once connected and formed the supercontinent Pangaea. North America during this time, was along the equator and had ideal conditions for coal swamps to form.

Nowadays, coal can be seen in a rock outcrop as a black band referred to as a coal seam. These layers vary from a few centimeters to meters thick.

Deeply buried coal is gathered by underground mining and coal near the surface can be collected through dragline stripping. This process involves stripping away upper layers of sediment to reveal coal seams.

Coal is a valuable fossil fuel, but at the rate people use coal globally, it’s estimated that it will run out within 150 to 250 years.
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