Human activity is rapidly changing the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, contributing to warming from excess carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other trace gases such as water vapor, chlorofluorocarbons, methane and nitrous oxide. These anthropogenic “greenhouse gases” play a critical role in controlling the earth’s climate because they increase the infrared opacity of the atmosphere, causing the surface of the planet to warm. The release of CO2 from fossil fuel consumption or the burning of forests for farming or pashare contributes approximately 7 petagrams of carbon (1 Pg C = 1 x 1015 g C) to the atmosphere each year. Approximately 3 Pg C of this “anthropogenic CO2” accumulates in the atmosphere annually, and the remaining 4 Pg C is stored in the terrestrial biosphere and the ocean.

Feely, R.A., C.L. Sabine, T. Takahashi, and R. Wanninkhof. 2001. Uptake and storage of carbon dioxide in the ocean: The global CO₂ survey. Oceanography 14(4):18–32, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2001.03.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.