Carbon Sinks
- Global Warming
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There is estimated to be over 5 x 1022g
of carbon on earth. One tonne is 106g, so this is 5 x 1016
tonnes, or to put it another way
- 50,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes.
About 99% of this is locked away in sedimentary
rocks such as limestone and chalk (both of these are made of calcium carbonate
CaCO3), the remainder can pass through the various carbon sinks and
reservoirs as part of the carbon cycle and so is in some manner "available".
This remaining carbon is distributed between a number of reservoirs, some living
(for instance you represent a carbon reservoir approximately equivalent in size
to a small bag of barbeque charcoal) , some atmospheric, some dissolved in water
and some buried beneath the earth.
| Carbon reservoir |
Mass in tonnes of
carbon x 109
(billions of tonnes of carbon) |
% of total |
|
Atmosphere |
740.0 |
1.43 |
|
Land plants |
550.0 |
1.06 |
|
Land animals |
0.5 |
0.001 |
|
Marine plants (algae) |
1.5 |
0.003 |
|
Marine animals |
1.5 |
0.003 |
|
Dead organic matter (in soil and peat) |
1600.0 |
3.08 |
|
Coal |
4500.0 |
8.67 |
|
Oil and gas |
500.0 |
0.96 |
|
Dissolved in the oceans |
38 000.0 |
73.2 |
|
Marine sediments |
6000.0 |
11.6 |
|
Totals |
51 893.5
|
100.007
|
This distribution is often rather surprising
at first sight, notably because there is so much carbon dioxide contained
dissolved in the oceans and relatively little is contained in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere however is exceptionally important in that it is the transfer
medium between the other sinks and while relatively little stays in the atmosphere
a great deal passes through it.
The oceans are by far the largest sink of carbon
as dissolved carbon dioxide. This is medium-term storage and is in a balance
with atmospheric carbon dioxide, if atmospheric carbon dioxide is removed, it
will replaced by some that was dissolved in the oceans, if large amounts of
carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere, much of it will be absorbed
by the oceans. The vast majority of carbon dioxide released since the start
of the industrial revolution is now held dissolved in the worlds oceans if this
was not the case, the atmospheric levels would have risen far more than they
even have.
It is difficult to appreciate numbers like
this in a relative manner by seeing them as a list, so here is a graphical way
of showing the data:
Or, if you prefer, as a bar chart:
Climate Change:
Global
Warming |
GW Antarctica |
Misconceptions |
Carbon
sinks | Carbon cycle |
Prevention |
Carbon Offsetting |
Tree Planting
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