News tagged with carbon cycle

Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong

No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jul 14, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (49) | comments 54

The rise of oxygen caused Earth's earliest ice age

(PhysOrg.com) -- Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 07, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (20) | comments 6

Global glaciation snowballed into giant change in carbon cycle

For insight into what can happen when the Earth's carbon cycle is altered -- a cause and consequence of climate change -- scientists can look to an event that occurred some 720 million years ago.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 01, 2010 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (21) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

The Carbon Cycle Before Humans

Geoengineering -- deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate to slow or reverse global warming -- has gained a foothold in the climate change discussion. But before effective action can be taken, the Earth's ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 16, 2010 | popularity 3.1 / 5 (19) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Whaling and fishing for the largest species has altered carbon sequestering in oceans

(PhysOrg.com) -- Decades of whaling and fishing for the largest species have altered the ability of oceans to store and sequester carbon, according to a team of marine researchers from the University of Maine, the University ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Sep 06, 2010 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (14) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

First plants caused ice ages: research

New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published today (February 1, 2012) in Nature Geoscience.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (12) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Even soil feels the heat: Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms

Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Mar 24, 2010 | popularity 3 / 5 (16) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Google Earth Application Maps Carbon's Course

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, particularly when the picture is used to illustrate science. Technology is giving us better pictures every day, and one of them is helping ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 21, 2009 | popularity 2.9 / 5 (16) | comments 0

Rising CO2 is causing plants to release less water to the atmosphere, researchers say

As carbon dioxide levels have risen during the last 150 years, the density of pores that allow plants to breathe has dwindled by 34 percent, restricting the amount of water vapor the plants release to the ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 03, 2011 | popularity 3.4 / 5 (14) | comments 57 | with audio podcast

Ocean census uncovers 'new world' of marine microbe life

An ocean census has revealed a "new world" of richly diverse marine microbe life that could help scientists understand more about key environmental processes on Earth, a study said Sunday.

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Apr 18, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 1

Breath of the Earth: Cycling carbon through terrestrial ecosystems

Two recent international studies are poised to change the way scientists view the crucial relationship between Earth's climate and the carbon cycle. These reports explore the global photosynthesis and respiration ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jul 05, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (10) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Fish guts explain marine carbon cycle mystery

Research published today reveals the major influence of fish on maintaining the delicate pH balance of our oceans, vital for the health of coral reefs and other marine life.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 15, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (9) | comments 1

Methane gas likely spewing into the oceans through vents in sea floor (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. Once released, that ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 02, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 8

Living in the galactic danger zone

We know for certain that life exists in the Milky Way galaxy: that life is us. Scientists are continually looking to understand more about how life on our planet came to be and the conditions that must be ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 23, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Bacterial communication could affect Earth's climate

(PhysOrg.com) -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists have discovered that bacterial communication could have a significant impact on the planet's climate.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Oct 12, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Carbon cycle

The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth.

The carbon cycle is usually thought of as four major reservoirs of carbon interconnected by pathways of exchange. These reservoirs are:

The annual movements of carbon, the carbon exchanges between reservoirs, occur because of various chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes. The ocean contains the largest active pool of carbon near the surface of the Earth, but the deep ocean part of this pool does not rapidly exchange with the atmosphere.

The global carbon budget is the balance of the exchanges (incomes and losses) of carbon between the carbon reservoirs or between one specific loop (e.g., atmosphere ↔ biosphere) of the carbon cycle. An examination of the carbon budget of a pool or reservoir can provide information about whether the pool or reservoir is functioning as a source or sink for carbon dioxide.

For more information about Carbon cycle, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.