Movement of Carbon - The Geological Component Flashcards
The Geological Component
What is the process by which carbon moves between stores?
Transfers.
Fluxes.
Define net carbon store?
If more carbon enters the store than leaves it.
Define net carbon source?
If more carbon leaves the store than enters it.
What is the geological component?
When carbon interacts with rock cycle through weathering, burial, subduction and volcanic eruptions.
In the geological component how is carbon removed from atmosphere?
By dissolving in water to from carbonic acid.
What happens when the weak carbonic acid reaches the Earth’s surface?
It reacts with Earth’s minerals slowly dissolving them into their component ions through chemical weathering.
After the component ions have been made, what happens?
They are carried in surface waters.
Like streams and river then into the ocean.
What do the component ions settle as in the ocean?
Minerals.
Calcite (calcium carbonate)
What happens when sea creatures die?
Skeletons sink to bottom where they collect as sediment.
Burial of overlying sediment can turn them into sedimentary limestone.
What does coral do?
Extracts calcium carbonate from seawater.
Dead coral becomes buried as live coral builds upon it.
Carbon now stored below seabed in layer of limestone.
What does tectonic forces do?
Cause plate movement to push seafloor under continental margins in process of subduction.
How does carbon return to atmosphere through volcanic activity?
Carbonaceous sea floor deposits pushed deep into Earth where they heat up, melt and rise to surface through volcanic eruptions, Co2 rich hot springs, vents.
How quick is weathering, burial, subduction and volcanism on returning Co2 to the atmosphere?
Long term.
Hundreds of million of years.
