Carbon cycling refers to the set of biogeochemical processes that regulate the transformation, transport, and storage of carbon among major Earth system reservoirs, including the atmosphere, terrestrial biosphere, oceans, and lithosphere. It encompasses autotrophic carbon fixation, heterotrophic respiration, decomposition, sedimentation, weathering, and anthropogenic fluxes such as fossil fuel combustion and land-use change. Research on carbon cycling quantifies fluxes and pool sizes, characterizes feedbacks between carbon reservoirs and climate, and employs observational networks, isotopic tracers, and Earth system models to constrain budgets, residence times, and perturbation responses across temporal scales from diurnal to geologic.
Wildfires pollute waterways and could affect their ability to sequester carbon, recent University of British Columbia research shows.
Earth Sciences
Jun 17, 2025
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Methods to enhance the ocean's uptake of carbon dioxide (CO₂) are being explored to help tackle the climate crisis. However, some of these approaches could significantly exacerbate ocean deoxygenation. Their potential impact ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 14, 2025
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A new study has revealed for the first time that ancient carbon, stored in landscapes for thousands of years or more, can find its way back to the atmosphere as CO₂ is released from the surfaces of rivers.
Earth Sciences
Jun 4, 2025
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A team of meteorologists, Earth scientists and oceanographers at Sorbonne Université, working with one colleague from Université Paris-Saclay and another from Université Brest, all in France, has developed a simulation that ...
In the southern flanks of the Indian Ocean and the central and eastern Pacific, just north of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, lie the Subantarctic Mode Waters. As part of the global ocean conveyor belt, these large masses ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 2, 2025
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Marine life plays a pivotal role in Earth's carbon cycle. Phytoplankton at the base of the aquatic food web take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, convert it to organic carbon, and move it around as they become food ...
Earth Sciences
May 27, 2025
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A new study published in Science Advances by researchers from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIG-CAS), along with international collaborators, reveals that deeply subducted carbonates ...
Earth Sciences
May 21, 2025
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44
On our planet, the cycle and balance of carbon from reservoir to reservoir is a matter of life or death. Carbon moves from the atmosphere to the ocean, to carbon-based life forms, to rocks or sediments, and it can be tied ...
Earth Sciences
May 21, 2025
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How sensitively does organic carbon stored in soils react to changes in temperature and humidity? This question is central to a new study now published in Nature Communications.
Earth Sciences
May 16, 2025
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Over the last decade, humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) have stabilized after a period of huge growth. Average growth is now down to just 0.6% per year, compared to 2% per year in the previous decade. But leveling ...
Environment
May 8, 2025
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