Long-Term Fate of Carbon:
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- Natural Balance: Over a super long time (more than 100,000 years), Earth naturally handles CO2. Volcanoes release it, and plants and rocks soak it up.
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Upwelling:
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- Definition: Sometimes, ocean areas get a visit from deep water that’s full of nutrients and CO2.
- Effect of Ocean Acidification: Because the upper ocean is becoming less saturated with CO2 each year due to ocean acidification, these visits might bring up water that could affect sea life, especially creatures that make shells.
- Rock Weathering: However, the process of rocks soaking up CO2 is slow and can’t quickly get rid of the CO2 we’re putting into the air.
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Short-Term Carbon Cycling
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- Internal Feedback: Over shorter times (more than 1,000 years), the ocean has a way of managing carbon. It’s like a self-regulating system that involves carbonate-rich sediment.
- Ocean Layers: The upper ocean is good at keeping carbonate (like a shell material) without it dissolving. Deeper ocean layers dissolve carbonate.
- Lysocline: Think of the lysocline as the point where deep ocean dissolving really starts to kick in.
- Sinking Shells: Shells from sea creatures sink to the ocean floor. In shallow water, they get buried and stick around for a long time. But in deep water, most of them dissolve, not trapping carbon for millions of years.
- Impact of Ocean Acidification: More CO2 going into the ocean messes up this balance. As the ocean becomes more acidic, it makes the lysocline and another depth (called carbonate compensation depth or CCD) shallower. This exposes more trapped shells to conditions that might dissolve them, which helps a bit with ocean acidification, but it takes a long time—like a thousand years.
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