Sentences with phrase «atmosphere over millions of years»

Billions of tonnes of carbon are held in coal seams, sequestered from the atmosphere over millions of years in a process that started in the carboniferous period several hundred million years ago.

Gas giants then slowly amass their atmospheres over millions of years.

Not exact matches

... The «cambrian explosion» happened over 300 million years... and also coincidentally was around the time oxygen became a large component of our atmosphere, allowing the diversity of life to explode since aerobic life tends to be much more efficient at metabolising food.

Earth itself would not support most of the life on this planet... enter the cytoplasm, which over many million years, slowly changed the atmosphere into one that was oxygen rich.

«If the earth formed over four billion years ago, all helium should have escaped from zircons, yet the crystals are loaded with this element» «The atmosphere should be full of helium atoms, the byproducts of millions of years of radioisotope decay, but it isn't.»

During the Eocene, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than 560 parts per million, at least twice preindustrial levels, and the epoch kicked off with a global average temperature more than 8 degrees Celsius — about 14 degrees Fahrenheit — warmer than today, gradually cooling over the next 22 million years.

What's more, when the minerals return to the surface in the forearcs of subduction zones, they can break down over millions of years, releasing gases back to atmosphere once again.

Because oxygen is critical to many forms of life and geochemical processes, numerous models and indirect proxies for the oxygen content in the atmosphere have been developed over the years, but there was no consensus on whether oxygen concentrations were rising, falling or flat during the past million years (and before fossil fuel burning).

«Over time it would spread out and get wider, reaching the top of the Martian atmosphere in a few million years, when it would start losing material because stuff would keep raining down on Mars.»

Bowen and colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.

In two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists develop models showing that the stellar wind — the constant outpouring of charged particles that sweep out into space — could severely deplete the atmosphere of such planets over hundreds of millions of years, rendering them unable to host surface - based life as we know it.

As a result — and for reasons that remain unexplained — the waters of the Southern Ocean may have begun to release carbon dioxide, enough to raise concentrations in the atmosphere by more than 100 parts per million over millennia — roughly equivalent to the rise in the last 200 years.

Plucked from millions of stars and galaxies analyzed over the past 7 years by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, this bunch burns considerably cooler than normal and contains atmospheres made entirely of carbon, with no traces of hydrogen or helium.

Over millions of years, wind and rain slowly exhume the crystal and leave it exposed on a lifeless grey wasteland of rock and rubble, under an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and methane.

«If all of the Earth's water is on the surface, that gives us one interpretation of the water cycle, where we can think of water cycling from oceans into the atmosphere and into the groundwater over millions of years,» she said.

Plants are major contributors to the chemical weathering of continental rocks, a key process in the carbon cycle that regulates Earth's atmosphere and climate over millions of years.

Southern Co is responsible for dumping over 145 million tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere each year, making it a key culprit in the global climate crisis.

«It is surprising, but Earth's atmosphere is about 50 trillion metric tons in mass, and so over long enough timescales — hundreds, thousands, even millions of years — all of that mass, and its drag across the surface of the planet, can have an effect,» said study author Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University in New York.

The space physicists noted that the stellar wind that blows from stars could deplete the atmosphere of such planets over hundreds of millions of years, eliminating liquid water that is vital for life as we know it.

The rise of the Andes, Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau, and mountain ranges in western North America over the past 25 million years would have been expected to have cause faster weathering and erosion, and therefore a faster burial of carbon drawn from the atmosphere.

Astronomers believe that the gas giants in our solar system formed by building up a large core over a few million years and then pulling in a huge amount of hydrogen and other gases to form an atmosphere.

Millions of people from all over the world visit Paris every year to experience the city's atmosphere, fashion, art and high caliber museums which are unlike anywhere else on the planet.

Objective scientists realize that coral, foraminifera and shellfish have deep mechanism that have evolved over 100s of millions of years as CO2 has fluctuated far wider than we see in the atmosphere today.

However, it's natural for living organisms to trash the planet as they divide and consume — just look at all of the organisms that went extinct over 2 million years ago when selfish photosynthetic bacteria began spewing oxygen into the atmosphere and eradicating countless species of anaerobic bacteria.

While the conditions in the geological past are useful indicators in suggesting climate and atmospheric conditions only vary within a a certain range (for example, that life has existed for over 3 billion years indicates that the oxygen level of the atmosphere has stayed between about 20 and 25 % throughout that time), I also think some skeptics are too quick to suggest the lack of correlation between temperature and CO2 during the last 550 million years falsifies the link between CO2 and warming (too many differences in conditions to allow any such a conclusion to be drawn — for example the Ordovician with high CO2 and an ice age didn't have any terrestrial life).

In other words, when we burn fossil fuels, we are utilizing a small part of the solar energy that had been collected and stored by plants over millions of years, and in the process we are liberating into the atmosphere the carbon dioxide that those plants had absorbed from the atmosphere in the first place.

The growth of the Andes and Himalayas over the past 50 million years is likely to be the reason that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere declined to the relatively low levels seen in pre-industrial times.

«Thus, human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of the kind that could not have happened in the past... Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.»

Over millions of years, there are times with many eruptions and reduced mountain building, and CO2 builds up in the atmosphere.

And it has had hundreds of millions of years anyway, so even that 10 - 20W / m ^ 2 near the base of the atmosphere will have contributed over the years.

Which is all very good news because it means we are very helpfully returning CO2 to the atmosphere from which it originally came and thereby being good citizens in the carbon cycle... unlike the the greedy and stupid plants which sucked most the CO2 out of the atmosphere over the last 175 million years without giving any thought to the sustainability of what they were doing.

Now humans are applying a much stronger, much faster forcing as we put back into the atmosphere, in a geologic heartbeat, fossil fuels that accumulated over millions of years.

«Over last 300 million years, when most plants evolved, the average CO2 content of the atmosphere seems to have been about 1000 to 1200 ppm.»

Also, plants use less water when they have more CO2... Over last 300 million years, when most plants evolved, the average CO2 content of the atmosphere seems to have been about 1000 to 1200 ppm... if you reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, this would have negative effects on plants.»

By stimulating a massive growth of plankton, called a bloom, Planktos claims to be able to draw millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere into the deep oceans over the next year.

Because the earth (mother earth, or Gaia, to all you tree hugger freaks) knows what we want, and what is best for us, and what is best is our nice Goldilocks climate that supports the inviolate and constitutionally protected right to cheap, atmosphere changing fossil fuels even though said usage essentially reverses 10s of millions of years of earth lower atmosphere affecting energy balances within a mere speck of time) and not you eco fools who want to harm the poor (something climate change would never do, bill gates and the world's leading scientists and thinkers and economists are fools to even think it — climate change will affect the wealthy) just to give the even more power over our individual lives.

Humans have increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from a pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million to over 400 today, a level not seen for millions of years.

Since to me (and many scientists, although some wanted a lot more corroborative evidence, which they've also gotten) it makes absolutely no sense to presume that the earth would just go about its merry way and keep the climate nice and relatively stable for us (though this rare actual climate scientist pseudo skeptic seems to think it would, based upon some non scientific belief — see second half of this piece), when the earth changes climate easily as it is, climate is ultimately an expression of energy, it is stabilized (right now) by the oceans and ice sheets, and increasing the number of long term thermal radiation / heat energy absorbing and re radiating molecules to levels not seen on earth in several million years would add an enormous influx of energy to the lower atmosphere earth system, which would mildly warm the air and increasingly transfer energy to the earth over time, which in turn would start to alter those stabilizing systems (and which, with increasing ocean energy retention and accelerating polar ice sheet melting at both ends of the globe, is exactly what we've been seeing) and start to reinforce the same process until a new stases would be reached well after the atmospheric levels of ghg has stabilized.

'' trying to come up with or re-post every possible argument under the sun to all but argue against the basic concept that radically altering the atmosphere on a multi million year basis is going to affect the net energy balance of earth, which over time is going to translate into a very different climate (and ocean level) than the one we've comfortably come to rely on.

Citi Bike riders took over 16.5 million rides last year, saving more than 23 million pounds of carbon from going into the atmosphere — the equivalent amount of carbon sequestered by 45,454 acres of forests in a single year.

While actual scientists are trying to piece together every little part of an otherwise almost un-piecable long term chaotic and variable system in response now to a massive increase in net lower atmospheric energy absorption and re radiation, Curry is busy — much like most of the comments on this site most of the time — trying to come up with or re-post every possible argument under the sun to all but argue against the basic concept that radically altering the atmosphere on a multi million year basis is going to affect the net energy balance of earth, which over time is going to translate into a very different climate (and ocean level) than the one we've comfortably come to rely on.

Each year, our customers avoid releasing nearly 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — equivalent to removing over 200,000 cars from the road.

«Aside from eliminating emissions and avoiding 1.5 °C degrees global warming and beginning the process of letting carbon dioxide drain from the Earth's atmosphere, transitioning eliminates 4 to 7 million air pollution deaths each year and creates over 24 million long - term full - time jobs by these plans,» Professor Jacobson said.

Within only a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.

My understanding is that the atmosphere warmed by about 6 degrees C from our current level, and that triggered increasing releases of methane from clathrates in a positive feedback fashion over thousands of years (or was it millions of years??).

He also said that in addition to the stark rise in carbon dioxide levels over the past year, researchers have now observed four straight years of increases of more than 2 parts per million in the atmosphere.

If just 1 % or even just half a percent of DWLWIR never reaches the oceans because it is blocked by very fine water droplets of spray and spume and is carried upwards into the atmosphere (rather than reconnecting with the oceans), then long term (over millions of years) the gross energy budget falls out of balance.