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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.
Contents
What Effect Does Carbon Dioxide Have On The Body
Australia’s opposition leader, Tony Abbott, recently derided an emissions trading scheme as “so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to nobody”. This echoes an earlier statement where Abbott dismissed carbon dioxide as an “invisible, odorless, weightless, tasteless substance”. In this modern age, most people are aware of how something invisible to the eye can nevertheless have a significant impact. Examples include radiation from radioactive material, germs and pit, gravity. In the case of carbon dioxide, it is actually its invisibility that is the key factor in how it causes global warming.
Student Activity 1: Carbon Dioxide
When sunlight reaches the Earth, it passes through our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are invisible to sunlight, also known as shortwave radiation because of the short wavelength. This allows sunlight to pass through the atmosphere unhindered by greenhouse gases and warm the Earth’s surface.
The warm surface of the Earth emits infrared heat, also known as longwave radiation because of the long wavelength. Greenhouse gases absorb longwave radiation. This results in the atmosphere trapping some of the Earth’s heat as it tries to escape into space. Heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide make the atmosphere warmer than it would be without any greenhouse gases.
Currently, we are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. As more greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, more heat is trapped. This causes global warming. Consequently, the fact that carbon dioxide allows sunlight to move freely through the atmosphere is an integral aspect of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide’s invisibility is an important part of what causes global warming.
Greenhouse warming has clear fingerprints observed throughout our climate. As greenhouse gases trap more heat, satellites should measure less heat escaping into space. It was observed by a number of different satellites. Surface measurements observe that more heat returns to Earth.
How Does Carbon Dioxide Affect The Environment?
John Tyndall predicted the specific patterns of greenhouse warming more than 150 years ago – nights warming faster than days and winters warming faster than summers. Both of these patterns were observed. Another characteristic pattern of human-caused global warming is a cooling upper atmosphere at the same time as the lower atmosphere is warming. This has also been observed.
Our confidence that humans are causing global warming is based on a lot of independent evidence. Human fingerprints are observed all over our climate.*For the new assessment of the past decade of understanding the carbon cycle, see the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (2018).*
What is the carbon cycle? What are the different pools and flows of carbon? Why are they important? This page provides a compilation of information and relevant links to help answer some of these questions.
The Carbon Cycle: What is the Carbon Cycle? What is the fast and slow cycle and how are they affected?
Greenhouse Gases’ Effect On Climate
Carbon Measurement Approaches and Accounting Frameworks: Approaches and Methods for Carbon Stock and Flow Estimation, Measurement and Accounting
Frequently asked questions and their answers: Answers to common questions such as the following are listed here: Can you quantify the sources and sinks of the global carbon cycle? How much carbon is stored in the different ecosystems? In terms of mass, how much carbon does 1 part per million per volume of atmospheric CO
‘Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. We are made of carbon, we eat carbon, and our civilizations – our economies, our homes, our means of transportation – are built on carbon. We need carbon, but that need is also intertwined with one of the most serious problems we face today: global climate change…..’
Four things can happen to move carbon from a plant and return it to the atmosphere, but all involve the same chemical reaction. Plants break down the sugar to get the energy they need to grow. Animals (including humans) eat the plants or plankton, and break down the plant sugar to get energy. Plants and plankton die and decay (are eaten by bacteria) at the end of the growing season. Or fire consumes plants. In each case, oxygen combines with sugar to release water, carbon dioxide, and energy. The basic chemical reaction looks like this:
Carbon Dioxide Co2
In all four processes, the carbon dioxide released in the reaction usually ends up in the atmosphere. The rapid carbon cycle is so closely linked to plant life that the growing season can be seen by the way carbon dioxide fluctuates in the atmosphere. In the Northern Hemisphere winter, when few land plants are growing and many are decaying, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise. During the spring, when plants start to grow again, concentrations drop. It’s like the earth is breathing. The ebb and flow of the rapid carbon cycle is visible in the changing seasons. As the great land masses of the Northern Hemisphere turn green in the spring and summer, they pull carbon from the atmosphere. This graph shows the difference in carbon dioxide levels from the previous month, with the long-term trend removed. This cycle peaks in August, with about 2 parts per million of carbon dioxide being pulled from the atmosphere. In fall and winter, as vegetation dies back in the northern hemisphere, decomposition and respiration return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. These maps show net primary productivity (the amount of carbon consumed by plants) on land (green) and in the oceans (blue) during August and December 2010. In August, the green areas of North America, Europe and Asia represent plant use carbon from the atmosphere to grow. In December, net primary productivity is negative at high latitudes, which outweighs the seasonal increase in vegetation in the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases…’
‘Three observational, analytical and modeling methods are used to estimate carbon stocks and fluxes: 1) stock measurements or “bottom-up” methods, 2) atmospheric measurements or “top-down” methods, and 3 ) ecosystem models (see Appendix) D for details). “Bottom-up” estimates of carbon exchange with the atmosphere depend on measurements of carbon contained in biomass, soil and water, as well as measurements of CO
Exchange between the land, water and atmosphere. Examples include direct measurement of power plant carbon emissions; remote sensing and field measurements repeated over time to estimate changes in ecosystem stocks; measurements of the amount of carbon gases released into the atmosphere by land and water ecosystems (in chambers or, on larger scales, using sensors on towers); and combined urban demographic and activity data (e.g. population and building floor areas) with “emission factors” to estimate the amount of CO
Top-down approaches infer land surface and ocean fluxes by coupling atmospheric gas measurements (using air sampling instruments on the ground, towers, buildings, balloons and aircraft or remote sensors on satellites) with carbon isotope methods, tracking techniques, and simulations of how these gases move in the atmosphere. The network of GHG measurements, types of measurement techniques and diversity of gases measured have grown exponentially since SOCCR1 (CCSP 2007), providing improved estimates of CO2.
Integrated Analysis Of Carbon Dioxide And Oxygen Concentrations As A Quality Control Of Ocean Float Data
Ecosystem models are used to estimate carbon stocks and fluxes with mathematical representations of essential processes, such as photosynthesis and respiration, and how these processes respond to external factors, such as temperature, precipitation, solar radiation and water movement. Models are also used with top-down atmospheric measurements to attribute observed GHG fluxes to specific land or sea features or locations.’
Shrestha, G., N. Cavallaro, R. Birdsey, M. A. Mayes, R. G. Najjar, S. C. Reed, P. Romero-Lankao, N. P. Gurwick, P. J. Marcotullio, and J. Field, 2018: Foreword. In Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2): A Continuing Assessment Report [Cavallaro, N., G. Shrestha, R. Birdsey, M. A. Mayes, R. G. Najjar, S. C. Reed, P. Romero-Lankao, and Z. Zhu ( eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 5-20, https://doi.org/10.7930/SOCCR2.2018.Foreword.
Birdsey, R., N. P. Gurwick, K. R. Gurney, G. Shrestha, M. A. Mayes, R. G. Najjar, S. C. Reed, and P. RomeroLankao, 2018: Appendix D. Carbon measurement approaches and accounting frameworks. In Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2): A Continuing Assessment Report [Cavallaro, N., G. Shrestha, R. Birdsey, M. A. Mayes, R. G. Najjar, S. C. Reed, P. Romero-Lankao, and Z. Zhu ( eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 834-838, doi: https:// doi.org/10.7930/SOCCR2.2018.AppD.
Excerpt from the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2, USGCRP 2018) Chapter 2 (Hayes et. al., 2018):
Greenhouse Gases, Facts And Information
‘Since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has released unprecedented amounts of carbon-containing greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide (CO), into the atmosphere.
), which affected the global carbon cycle. For the past three centuries, North America has been recognized as a net source of CO
Emissions to the atmosphere (Houghton 1999, 2003; Houghton and Hackler 2000; Hurtt et al., 2002). Now there is greater interest to include in this picture
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