Using energy from the Sun, both plants and plankton combine carbon dioxide (CO 2) and water to form sugar (CH 2O) and oxygen. Phytoplankton (microscopic organisms in the ocean) and plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by absorbing it into their cells. Plants and phytoplankton are the main components of the fast carbon cycle. (See The Ocean’s Carbon Balance on the Earth Observatory.) It is likely that changes in ocean temperatures and currents helped remove carbon from and then restore carbon to the atmosphere over the few thousand years in which the ice ages began and ended. In the meantime, winds, currents, and temperature control the rate at which the ocean takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Over millennia, the ocean will absorb up to 85 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, but the process is slow because it is tied to the movement of water from the ocean’s surface to its depths. However, since carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, the ocean now takes more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. The hydrogen reacts with carbonate from rock weathering to produce bicarbonate ions.īefore the industrial age, the ocean vented carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in balance with the carbon the ocean received during rock weathering. Once in the ocean, carbon dioxide gas reacts with water molecules to release hydrogen, making the ocean more acidic. At the surface, where air meets water, carbon dioxide gas dissolves in and ventilates out of the ocean in a steady exchange with the atmosphere. However, the slow carbon cycle also contains a slightly faster component: the ocean. It takes a few hundred thousand years to rebalance the slow carbon cycle through chemical weathering. If carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere because of an increase in volcanic activity, for example, temperatures rise, leading to more rain, which dissolves more rock, creating more ions that will eventually deposit more carbon on the ocean floor. For comparison, humans emit about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year-100–300 times more than volcanoes-by burning fossil fuels.Ĭhemistry regulates this dance between ocean, land, and atmosphere. At present, volcanoes emit between 130 and 380 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. When volcanoes erupt, they vent the gas to the atmosphere and cover the land with fresh silicate rock to begin the cycle again. The heated rock recombines into silicate minerals, releasing carbon dioxide. When the plates collide, one sinks beneath the other, and the rock it carries melts under the extreme heat and pressure. Earth’s land and ocean surfaces sit on several moving crustal plates. Download the PDF file with the short version of the lesson right now so that the lesson is available to you at any time, regardless of the Internet connection.The slow cycle returns carbon to the atmosphere through volcanoes. I recommend that you complete other lessons presented on this site and learn how to draw various objects of living and inanimate nature. If such a picture is placed in a frame, you get an excellent interior decoration. Now you know how to draw a mountain landscape. Using the eraser, carefully remove the extra lines in your drawing.įor coloring, use different shades of blue. Repeat the previous step and add two different sized fir trees on the other side of the drawing. Depict the fir trees on the other side.On the left side of your drawing, draw two tall pointed fir trees. Just below the mountains, draw a jagged wavy line, as shown in the example.Īt this stage, sketch out the forest in the foreground. Approximately in the middle of your drawing, draw one uneven line.ĭepict another jagged free form line over the previously drawn one.
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