”For years, one of the biggest mysteries in climate science has been the question of what ultimately happens to the carbon emitted by motor vehicles, factories, deforestation, and other sources. Of the approximately 8 billion tons of carbon emitted each year, about 40 percent accumulates in the atmosphere and about 30 percent is absorbed by the oceans. Scientists believe that terrestrial ecosystems, especially trees, take up the remainder.” https://phys.org/news/2007-06-scientists-carbon.html#jCp

https://www.nature.com/news/the-hunt-for-the-world-s-missing-carbon-1.17867

The missing sink, trees

The answer lies in the carbon sinks, described in several countries INDCs to the Paris Agreement. A main carbon sink are forests-trees as Mushtaq rightly pointed out.

This paper describes the latest carbon budget;

Le Quéré, C., Andrew, R. M., Friedlingstein, P., Sitch, S., Pongratz, J., Manning, A. C., Korsbakken, J. I., Peters, G. P., Canadell, J. G. and Jackson, R. B. (2018) ‘Global carbon budget 2017’, Earth System Science Data, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 405.

It is now known that roughly a third of anthropogenic carbon is in the ocean, another third in the atmosphere, and yet another third in the terrestrial biosphere (trees etc.) Burgermeister, J. (2007) ‘Missing carbon mystery: Case solved?’, Nature Reports Climate Change, no. 0708 [Online]. DOI: 10.1038/climate.2007.35 (Accessed 10 May 2010).

However there is still a small missing carbon sink, which I suspect is in the aquasphere - the non ocean part of the hydrosphere.

Hello to all,

It is also important to revisit the role of the tropical ocean as an important net source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Recent studies prove that strong El Ninos enhance out-gassing from the anomalously warm seas, causing large spikes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Feely et al. The influence of El Niño on the equatorial Pacific contribution to atmospheric CO2 accumulation. Nature, 398, 597–601 (1999) https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel1868/text.shtml

NASA reveals El Niño is to blame for record breaking jump in carbon dioxide levels http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4975036/Another-El-Nino-problem-More-carbon-dioxide-air.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4975036/Another-El-Nino-problem-More-carbon-dioxide-air.html

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/el-nino-could-push-co2-above-milestone-19605

Cheers

Alastair Bain McDonald,

Le Quéré et al. carbon budget reports are very comprehensive and insightful. Unfortunately, they have a major flaw in that they attribute all emissions from land-cover/land change to anthropogenic influences. Thus they fail to distinguish the influence of El Nino and other natural mechanisms on carbon emissions from anthropogenic carbon sources. They also do not recognize the immense potential of the tropical / equatorial ocean

Cheers

Thank you all for the excellent discussion, but is it possible to accurately measure the carbon sink?

Ken,

You wrote: "... do you agree that carbon can only be "missed" temporarily and thus cannot affect the global amount in the short-term... a few human generations? "

That question does not make sense, so I will explain where it is wrong but I am not going to get into a debate about your "fake" science.

It is not the carbon that is missing. It is the sink for the carbon which we are adding to the atmosphere that is missing. The missing sink does not affect the "global" amount of CO2, whatever that is supposed to mean. It does affect the amount in the atmosphere, but since we do not know what it is we cannot say whether it is permanent or temporary, and if temporary how long it will remain sunk, before it becomes a source.

For instance, the formation of peat in the Arctic was a sink for carbon prior to the last glaciation and was preserved as permafrost. Global warming is leading to that peat respiring, and leading to it now becoming source of CO2 (and CH4).

Rereading your question, I think you intended to write "and thus CAN ONLY affect the global amount in the short term." That of course is wrong, as I explained regarding the arctic peat. Moreover, if the sinks are temporary, then even if we were to stop all man made emissions of CO2, CO2 would continue to rise as those sinks changed into sources. That is what we fear will happen with the Brazilian jungle which is currently a sink, but for how long?

That's my 2 cents worth. I am not wasting any more time replying to you.

Cheers, Alastair.

J. C. Tarafdar ,

To measure the global carbon sink, we must first of all make an accurate inventory of the major sinks and sources of carbon. It must also be remembered that the behaviour of natural systems as either sink or source may change over time - sinks of carbon today can become sources some time in future depending on a number of environmental / biogeochemical conditions being met. Presently, Corine LeQuere and co-authors are doing a tremendous job at budgeting the anthropogenic component of the carbon system. Other scientists like Takachi et al., have also done decent jobs at estimating air-sea CO2 flux as well as Co2 dynamics in other natural systems such as Peat forests, using indirect methods based on the differences in pCO2 between the sea and the atmosphere, Atmospheric Inversion Methods, and eddy covariance techniques. These measurements have their major flaws which limit their accuracy in each of the earth system compartments in which the studies were conducted. My take on this is that, the shear complexity characteristic of the highly interconnected earth system makes accurate measurements of the carbon sink at a reasonable spatial scale, a very difficult and complicated task.

Cheers

http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/?q=en/content/atmospheric-inversions

http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/?q=content/inversion-description

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01301.x

Nice and informative query@ J. C. Tarafdar

The problem became known as the 'missing sink'. The world's forests, which pull carbon out of the air through photosynthesis, were a possible hiding place. Today, they collectively hold around 650 billion tonnes of carbon, and it seemed plausible that they could be mopping up the missing carbon.

You are very right, the other evidence that the increased amount of phytoplankton in the oceans.

Follow this link

https://www.zkola.cz/sofia/pedagogove/kabinetjaz/metodickematerialy/Documents/TheCaseOfTheMissingCarbon.pdf

regards

Khalid,

The file you posted is password protected and so I cannot read it.

Cheers, Alastair.

Kenneth, obviously wrong.

The concentration of carbon in living matter (18%) is almost 100 times greater than its concentration in the earth (0.19%). So living things extract carbon from their nonliving environment. For life to continue, this carbon must be recycled. That is our topic.

http://www.biology-pages.info/C/CarbonCycle.html#Where_is_the_missing_carbon

Prof.Kenneth, whether carbon trading would be helpful to return a balance?

Thank you all for your excellent discussion. It seems that lot of researches is still needed on the field to exactly pin point the missing carbon. Once again many thanks for your participation.

It is interesting to analyse the NOAA statistics in more detail:

Preprint The missing carbon: How close are we to being carbon neutral?

Thank you Dr. John for the information.

The information has been building up on the NOAA site for all to see, requiring no more than a simple Excel spreadsheet to make a true comparison. Why has no issue been made of it to politicians? Could it be that there are those who would not want it to be seen?

John Billingsley An alternative explanation could be that researchers and regulators in the area has known this for decades but you just discovered it.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle

I recommend everyone to study this paper we wrote to explain the various ideas and hypotheses openly

Article How Much Human-Caused Global Warming Should We Expect with B...

Willie Soon, Your paper doesn't really concern the fate of emitted CO2 which is the subject of this question.

Henrik Rasmus Andersen: thank you for commenting again, but you should really be a little more patient and read before you speak?

Try reading around:

3. What Is the Relationship between Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Actual Changes in Atmospheric Concentrations?

where we outlined all the hypotheses

Henrik is of course right. As Professor Ridd discovered, dispelling concerns is not to everyone's liking. I suspect that Facebook could soon classify such analysis as misinformation and ban it.

But such a simple bit of arithmetic would surely be hard to contest.

I agree with Dr John Billingsley that the amount of carbon we have on Earth doesn't change. It is the same as it is now as it was millions of years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Most carbon is stored in reservoirs, or sinks, such as rocks and sediments, while the rest is stored in the atmosphere, oceans, and living organisms. We can even, to a degree, measure how much carbon is absorbed by various known around the world. When the math is done on this we find that there is extra carbon being removed from the atmosphere by an unknown source. This is what we call the missing carbon sink. Scientists claim to have located the 'missing carbon sink' in tropical forests that are absorbing around one billion tonnes more carbon than previously thought. Carbon removal include natural strategies like tree restoration and agricultural soil management; high-tech strategies like direct air capture and enhanced mineralization; and hybrid strategies like enhanced root crops, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and ocean-based carbon removal. On Earth, most carbon is stored in rocks and sediments, while the rest is located in the ocean, atmosphere, and in living organisms. These are the reservoirs, or sinks, through which carbon cycles.

Some very good points. The best way to capture and store carbon is through photosynthesis, where a cane crop can strip the atmosphere of a sizeable part of its carbon in just a single season.

Absorption increases with atmospheric concentration, so at 500 ppm emissions at present levels might be absorbed to reach equilibrium - but of course they will keep going up, despite any efforts that we may make.