How much carbon is recycled and stored in the living biosphere?

Question

Is 90% of the carbon being used by living bodies, 9% in CO2 in the ocean/atmosphere and 1% of the carbon stored in dead stuff like fossel fuel? What is the ratio of these carbon stores?

Answer 1

most of it is located in the ocean:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Answer 2

Benjamin has the storage numbers.  Approximately 800 gigatonnes is recycled each year.  Sources (all) put out about that, sinks absorb about 785 gigatonnes.  15 gigatonnes is being added to the air every year.

Note that that's due to us.  If we weren't emitting huge quantities of CO2, sources and sinks would have achieved balance long ago.

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 3

According to NASA, carbon is stored in various reservoirs at these quantities (circa 2004)

Atmosphere: 750 GigaTons of Carbon

Land flora and fauna: 610 GtC

Soils: 1580 GtC

Marine Biota: 3 GtC

Ocean Surface: 1020 GtC

Deep Oceans: 38,100 GtC

Ocean Sediments: 150 GtC

As fossil fuels: ~ 4000GtC

These numbers account for carbon involved in the carbon cycle. Not included is the ~70 million GtC of carbonate rock and kerogen that is not readily moved from one reservoir to another. By burning fossil fuels, humans place about 5.5 GtC into the atmosphere each year.

See the graphic linked below if you want to know annual fluxes between reservoirs:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library...

Edit: Note to Oracle2w: You are confusing the amount of carbon within reservoirs with the amount that moves between reservoirs. Anthropogenic (manmade) activities currently add 5.5 gigatons per year of carbon into the atmosphere, mostly by burning fossil fuels. Some of this carbon is “recycle” by ocean sinks, and some of it is “recycled” by plant photosynthesis, but enough remains in the atmosphere to increase the atmospheric concentration. Since industrialization, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by 35%.

Answer 4

No one really knows.  There is  lot of uncertainty in the carbon cycle.  The UN has a graphic at:

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/13.htm

You will need to calculate the ratios yourself.

The key factoid to note is that the uncertainty in the intermediate and deep water reservoirs is 2,000 gigatonnes, and mankind's contribution to atmospheric CO2 is 5.5 gigatonnes per year.

(Different sources have different numbers for the reservoirs and fluxes.)

Mankind's contribution is so dwarfed by the uncertainties that making a case we are responsible for climate change .... is a bit of a stretch.