[1] A decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration during the midPalaeozoic is postulated to have been partially the consequence of the evolution of rooted land plants. Root development increased the amount of carbonic acid generated by root respiration within soils. This led to increased chemical weathering of silicates and subsequent formation of carbonates, resulting in lower a...

Recent studies of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica have proven that both temperature and CO2 content of the earth’s atmosphere followed a regular 100,000 year cycle of change and that they are closely correlated. Moreover, the observed increase of CO2 in the atmosphere exceeds the predicted values extrapolated from historical data. Other than industrialization and rapid urbanization, geo...

[1] Presently, much of CO2 fossil-fuel emissions are removed from the atmosphere through natural ocean uptake of CO2. Many schemes have now been proposed by which the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere could be slowed with intentional further storage of CO2 in the ocean. Our review of the literature indicates inconsistency in whether ambient ocean carbon uptake is included when...

Comparisons between SCIAMACHY atmospheric CO2 retrieved using (FSI) WFM-DOAS to ground based FTIR data and the TM3 chemistry transport model M. P. Barkley, P. S. Monks, U. Frieß, R. L. Mittermeier, H. Fast, S. Körner , and M. Heimann 4 EOS, Space Research Centre, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK Department of Chemistry, University of Leicester, Leicester...

Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect both the quantity and quality of plant tissues produced, which will impact the cycling and storage of carbon (C) within plant/soil systems and thus the rate of CO2 release back to the atmosphere. Research is needed to more accurately quantify the effects of elevated CO2 and associated feedbacks on soil CO2 efflux in order to predict the poten...

[1] Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) offers a unique opportunity to investigate the variability of mid‐tropospheric CO2 over the entire globe. In this paper, we use AIRS data to examine the interannual variability of CO2 and find significant correlations between AIRS mid‐tropospheric CO2 and large‐scale atmospheric dynamics. During El Niño events, mid‐tropospheric CO2 over the central Pacifi...

We use both theory and ocean biogeochemistry models to examine the role 3 of the soft-tissue biological pump in controlling atmospheric CO2. We demonstrate that 4 atmospheric CO2 can be simply related to the amount of inorganic carbon stored in the 5 ocean by the soft tissue pump, which we term (OCSsoft). OCSsoft is linearly related 6 to the inventory of remineralized nutrientwhich in turn is j...

We examine the atmospheric budget of CO2 at temperate continental sites in the Northern Hemisphere. On a monthly time scale both surface exchange and atmospheric transport are important in determining the rate of change of CO2 mixing ratio at these sites. Vertical differences between the atmospheric boundary layer and free troposphere over the continent are generally greater than large-scale zo...

About 34 million years ago, Earth's climate cooled and an ice sheet formed on Antarctica as atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) fell below ~750 parts per million (ppm). Sedimentary cycles from a drill core in the western Ross Sea provide direct evidence of orbitally controlled glacial cycles between 34 million and 31 million years ago. Initially, under atmospheric CO2 levels of ≥600 ppm, a smaller...

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations appear to have been considerably higher than modern levels during much of the Phanerozoic and it has hence been proposed that surface temperatures were also higher. Some studies have, however, suggested that Earth's temperature (estimated from the isotopic composition of fossil shells) may have been independent of variations in atmospheric CO2 (e.g. in the Jurassi...