May 7, 2011 

Carbon in the oceans and the atmosphere

How much carbon is in the oceans? How much is in the atmosphere?

I thought it might be good to know this, when you are trying to learn about emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, and   the possible contribution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I have estimated these amounts.  In my previous article for this website, "World Carbon Inventory", I found out the daily emissions for the entire world, for the burning of oil, natural gas, and coal is:   25 million metric tons of carbon per day.

This is the amount of carbon that is in the carbon dioxide that comes from being burned, if all of the oil and coal and natural gas is produced gets burned.  We know, it all does not get burned every day.  Example-some of the oil is used to make plastic, so it might not get burned today, but it might get burned  tomorrow,  when we throw away the broken toy, and the broken toy goes to an incinerator...

So I have calculated the maximum amount of possible carbon emissions, if all of the fossil fuels that are produced each day get burned.

Next, how much carbon is in the ocean?  Well, there are 2 kinds of carbon - organic and inorganic. The organic carbon is in the fish and the plants, I did not try to count this- it is an impossible task.

It is possible however to estimate the amount of inorganic carbon that is dissolved in the oceans- in carbon dioxide and carbonates.....

69 million million metric tons of carbon.

(I use million metric tons because that is what I used in the world carbon inventory article)

69,000,000 million metric tons

or 69,000,000,000,000 metric tons=69 quadrillion metric tons

I do not like to use quadrillions, I like million million better....

and then, we know there is alot of  interaction between between the ocean and the atmosphere...

CO2 can leave the ocean and go into the atmosphere, and vice versa....

The lower layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, has.....

1 million million metric tonnes of carbon....

so  we can add the numbers for the oceans and the atmosphere... = 70 million million metric tonnes

and then, is the amount from the daily  burning of fossil fuels significant?

is .00004 percent significant?

click for my work:

click for my references:

Please email me if you have any comments.....