Earth Catastrophes and their Impact on the Carbon Cycle

Abstract

Great strides have been made in quantifying the diverse world of carbon in Earth. Our understanding now encompasses the amount and forms of carbon storage in the Earth’s core, mantle and crust; how carbon is mobilized via melting and outgassing from the Earth’s interior; and the extent and diversity of carbon that is bound in the form of microbial life on the seafloor and in the crust. Much of this work has been carried out under the auspices of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO; a global network of over 1,000 scientists on a 10-year quest to better understand all aspects of Earth’s carbon cycle). Important synthetic outputs of the DCO are steady-state models based on groundbreaking new data that can be used to evaluate the contemporary fluxes between carbon reservoirs in the deep Earth and their effects on everything from the evolution of life to the air we breathe.