GEOL 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Conservation Of Mass, Snowball Earth, Carbon Sink
15 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
Lecture 22 introduction to the carbon cycle. Motivation for understanding carbon cycle: co2 influences climate, and co2 concentrations are rising. What is the main source of hco3. Mass conservation is useful for understanding biogeochemical cycles. The vast majority of earth"s carbon is stored in rocks. Each box is a reservoir or a process. Numbers in boxes are mass in gons c. Total flux out of the surface ocean is 191. 6 gtons/yr. The biosphere breathes on an annual cycle. The northern hemisphere has more landmass, so it breathes more strongly than the southern hemisphere. Atmospheric o2 has been constrained over the past few hundred mry to the fire window . At least two negative feedbacks have been proposed to stabilize atmospheric oxygen. Why can"t atmospheric o2 concentrations rise above 35% Why evidence implies that atmospheric o2 hasn"t dropped below 13% for hundreds of. Silicate weathering takes carbon out of the atmosphere and stores it in ocean sediment.
