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We add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion. About 40% of this carbon stays in the atmosphere and roughly 30% enters the ocean, and we are not too sure where all the rest goes.
Most scientists thought the remaining carbon was taken up by plants, but measurements show plants don't absorb all of the remaining 30% of carbon we generate.
Lots of theories have been expounded about where the leftover carbon is being stored.
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests some of this carbon may be disappearing underneath the world's deserts – a process exacerbated by irrigation, beginning as recently as 2000 years ago.
When cultivating and irrigating arid/saline lands in arid zones, salts are leached downward. Simultaneously, dissolved inorganic carbon is washed down into the huge saline aquifers underneath vast deserts, forming a large carbon sink or pool.
Researchers studying the Tarim Basin in China, found that around 20 billion metric tons of carbon is stored underneath the desert, dissolved in an aquifer that contains roughly ten times the amount of water held in the Great Lakes.
This is a carbon sink that is not observable in plant or soil, with dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) leached from irrigated arid land and deposited in the saline/alkaline aquifers under bare deserts. For the most part, this is a one way trip for the carbon. No mechanism has been identified for return to the surface or the atmosphere.
More importantly, the DIC goes into an almost untouched pool in saline/alkaline aquifers hidden beneath deserts, which is estimated to be up to 1000 Pg (1,102,311,310 kilotons) globally, large enough to be recognized as the third largest active carbon pool on land.
Such carbon sinks formed during groundwater recharge has been reported before. But never on this scale.
The amount of dissolved inorganic carbon stored is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher than previously thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:15AM
Not the GP, just thought I'd help you out...
Well you didn't answer my question of how it is calculated (instead talking about the mass of the atmosphere?)
Let me spell it out:
To compute the amount of X in the atmosphere, determine the average concentration of X, determine the mass of the atmosphere, and multiply.
If you still don't get it, substitute X=CO2 in the above sentence, and read it out loud (slowly, if necessary -- we'll wait).
Also averaging anything over the surface of a sphere is not trivial, it is an unsolved problem, so I know you do not know what you are talking about
But averaging does not require "evenly distributing n points on a sphere" -- you can take measurements at an arbitrary set of points, calculate appropriate weights (weight of each point is proportional to the area of that point's region on a Voronoi diagram [jasondavies.com]), and compute a weighted average. Quantifying the error in such an average appears non-trivial, even knowing/assuming limiting parameters (such as maximum spacial frequency or maximum gradient) about the actual distribution of the variable being measured and averaged, but the average itself is quite simple.
Because you conflate averaging of samples with selection of sampling points, we know you don't know what you're talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:38AM
Fellow AC. I actually followed one of the papers and see there is a very complex methodology behind these numbers (as I expected). Please stop acting like you know what you are talking about without citing sources, it only hurts your cause:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=11267&cid=279986#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]