Carbon cycle

Carbon is the chemical courage of life on Earth. Carbon compounds regulate the Globe'due south temperature, make upwards the nutrient that sustains us, and provide energy that fuels our global economic system.

Most of Earth's carbon is stored in rocks and sediments. The balance is located in the ocean, temper, and in living organisms. These are the reservoirs through which carbon cycles.

NOAA technicians service a buoy in the Pacific Ocean designed to provide real-time data for ocean, weather and climate prediction.

NOAA observing buoys validate findings from NASA'due south new satellite for measuring carbon dioxide

Carbon storage and substitution

Carbon moves from one storage reservoir to another through a variety of mechanisms. For instance, in the food chain, plants motion carbon from the atmosphere into the biosphere through photosynthesis. They use energy from the sun to chemically combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen and oxygen from water to create sugar molecules. Animals that eat plants assimilate the sugar molecules to get energy for their bodies. Respiration, excretion, and decomposition release the carbon dorsum into the atmosphere or soil, continuing the cycle.

The ocean plays a critical part in carbon storage, as information technology holds virtually 50 times more carbon than the temper. Two-mode carbon exchange can occur quickly betwixt the bounding main'south surface waters and the atmosphere, just carbon may be stored for centuries at the deepest bounding main depths.

Rocks like limestone and fossil fuels like coal and oil are storage reservoirs that incorporate carbon from plants and animals that lived millions of years agone. When these organisms died, slow geologic processes trapped their carbon and transformed it into these natural resources. Processes such every bit erosion release this carbon back into the atmosphere very slowly, while volcanic activity can release it very chop-chop. Burning fossil fuels in cars or power plants is another way this carbon tin be released into the atmospheric reservoir quickly.

A discovery by a NOAA scientist has led to a new way of estimating how much carbon dioxide is taken up by plant communities, such as the Amazon rainforest.

A trace gas present in the atmosphere in miniscule amounts is helping scientists respond one of the biggest questions out there: Has plant growth increased alongside ascent levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Changes to the carbon cycle

Homo activities have a tremendous bear on on the carbon cycle. Called-for fossil fuels, changing country use, and using limestone to make concrete all transfer significant quantities of carbon into the temper. Equally a event, the corporeality of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rapidly rising; it is already greater than at whatsoever time in the last 3.6 meg years. The body of water absorbs much of the carbon dioxide that is released from burning fossil fuels. This extra carbon dioxide is lowering the bounding main's pH, through a process called ocean acidification. Ocean acidification interferes with the ability of marine organisms (including corals, Dungeness crabs, and snails) to build their shells and skeletons.

Alpine landscape, Elk Range, Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

New finding addresses a major uncertainty in climate models

Education CONNECTION

Take a bite of dinner, breathe in air, or a bulldoze in a car — you are part of the carbon cycle. The resources in this drove provide real globe examples of the changes occurring in the wheel. There is much to larn about this essential topic and some of the resource highlight exciting career opportunities in this field of report.