According to a new study, global warming may result in a decrease in the burial of organic carbon and a rise in the amount of carbon released back into the atmosphere. This is caused by the potential effect of higher ocean temperatures in boosting the metabolic rates of bacteria.
Researchers analyzed data from drilled cores of muddy seafloor sediments that were gathered during 81 of the more than 1,500 shipboard expeditions.
Their study presents the most detailed accounting to date of organic carbon burial over the past 30 million years.
“What we’re finding is that burial of organic carbon is very active,” said study co-author Mark Torres of Rice University. “It changes a lot, and it responds to the Earth’s climatic system much more than scientists previously thought.”
The paper’s supporting author, Yige Zhang of Texas A&M, said, “If our new records turn out to be right, then they’re going to change a lot of our understanding about the organic carbon cycle. As we warm up the ocean, it will make it harder for organic carbon to find its way to be buried in the marine sediment system.”
Carbon is responsible for life, and carbon constantly cycles between Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere as plants and animals grow and decompose. Carbon cycles through the Earth on a journey that takes millions of years. It starts at plate tectonic subduction zones where the relatively thin oceanic plates are dragged below continental plates. Descending oceanic crust heats up as it sinks, and most of its carbon returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide from volcanoes.
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