The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide temporarily fell by 50% immediately preceding a period of intense volcanism, likely because of increased weathering, new results reveal.
carbon dioxide
Posted inEditors' Vox
Rates of Mineral Dissolution from the Flask to Enhanced Weathering
Assessing the rate that weathering could draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere requires understanding why lab- and field-based rate measurements differ by orders of magnitude.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Monitoring Ocean Color From Deep Space: A TEMPO Study
Scientists apply machine learning to demonstrate that geosynchronous satellites can be used to assess the health of oceans from deep space.
Posted inNews
Coral Diversity Drops as Ocean Acidifies
As seawater becomes steadily more acidic, complex branching corals die off and are replaced with hard boulder corals and algae.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Cows, Coal, and Chemistry: The Role of Photochemistry in Methane Budget
Recent increases in atmospheric methane are a result of changing natural and manmade sources, climate, and other less-understood factors linked to its role in the atmosphere’s self-cleaning mechanisms.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
What Could Happen to the Ocean’s Carbon If AMOC Collapses
Mass glacier melting may have led this influential ocean current system to collapse at the end of the last ice age. A pair of modeling studies examines how such a collapse could affect dissolved inorganic carbon and carbon isotopes in Earth’s oceans.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Taking Carbon Science Out of Orbit
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite reveals an impressively dynamic picture of the Earth’s carbon cycle, yet it may be prematurely decommissioned and destroyed due to budget cuts.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Serendipity in Space: NASA’s Eye in the Sky
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission, proposed for early termination, has turned out to be a boon to forest and agricultural management.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Rising CO2 and Climate Change Reorganize Global Terrestrial Carbon Cycling
Rising CO2 and climate change are redistributing terrestrial carbon fluxes and reservoirs across latitudes and reducing carbon residence times globally.
Posted inNews
Fossilized Micrometeorites Record Ancient CO2 Levels
A cadre of iron-rich extraterrestrial particles picked up faint whiffs of our planet’s atmosphere when they fell to Earth millions of years ago.