Carbon Sinks
- Global Warming
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Full
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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
of carbon on earth
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 is atmospheric, some
is dissolved
in water and some is 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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