A new study investigates the sinks and sources of key greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the Arctic landscape with a spatial resolution of only a few square meters. Vegetation and soil conditions ...
Earth Sciences
22 hours ago
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15
Governments and businesses are relying on dangerous amounts of future removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, instead of more rapidly reducing emissions and phasing out fossil fuels. This problem is partly due ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 1, 2024
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48
Mangroves and saltmarshes sequester large amounts of carbon, mitigating the greenhouse effect. New research from the University of Gothenburg shows that these environments are perhaps twice as effective as previously thought.
Earth Sciences
Feb 1, 2024
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58
Engineers in Australia have developed a small ammonia gas sensor that could enable safer hydrogen storage and specialized medical diagnostic devices.
Analytical Chemistry
Jan 31, 2024
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30
Researchers from the Oxford Martin Program on the Future of Plastics, University of Oxford, have outlined ambitious targets to help deliver a sustainable and net zero plastic economy. In a paper published in Nature, the authors ...
Environment
Jan 31, 2024
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3
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have concluded that the methane uptake in dry landscapes exceeds methane emissions from wet areas across the ice-free part of Greenland. The results of the new study contribute ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 31, 2024
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30
The child runs a finger along the lines of text, painstakingly mouthing the words. Teaching children to read and write has always been a major task for our schools, but developments in society require a new, broader view ...
Education
Jan 30, 2024
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8
Exoplanet K2-18b is garnering a lot of attention. James Webb Space Telescope spectroscopy shows it has carbon and methane in its atmosphere. Those results, along with other observations, suggest the planet could be a long-hypothesized ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 30, 2024
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3
A new discovery by Tel Aviv University has succeeded in cultivating and characterizing tomato varieties with higher water use efficiency without compromising yield. The researchers, employing CRISPR genetic editing technology, ...
Biotechnology
Jan 30, 2024
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352
As efforts to address the effects of a warming planet ramp up, CO2 removal is at the forefront of sustainability. But what happens to that carbon dioxide once it's removed from the environment? Researchers at UConn are showing ...
Analytical Chemistry
Jan 29, 2024
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Carbon dioxide (chemical formula: CO2) is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state.
Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis to make sugars, which may either be consumed in respiration or used as the raw material to produce other organic compounds needed for plant growth and development. It is produced during respiration by plants, and by all animals, fungi and microorganisms that depend either directly or indirectly on plants for food. It is thus a major component of the carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is generated as a by-product of the combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of vegetable matter, among other chemical processes. Large amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted from volcanoes and other geothermal processes such as hot springs and geysers and by the dissolution of carbonates in crustal rocks.
As of March 2009[update], carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at a concentration of 387 ppm by volume. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons, driven primarily by seasonal plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere. Concentrations of carbon dioxide fall during the northern spring and summer as plants consume the gas, and rise during the northern autumn and winter as plants go dormant, die and decay. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas as it transmits visible light but absorbs strongly in the infrared and near-infrared.
Carbon dioxide has no liquid state at pressures below 5.1 atmospheres. At 1 atmosphere (near mean sea level pressure), the gas deposits directly to a solid at temperatures below −78 °C and the solid sublimes directly to a gas above −78 °C. In its solid state, carbon dioxide is commonly called dry ice.
CO2 is an acidic oxide: an aqueous solution turns litmus from blue to pink. It is the anhydride of carbonic acid, an acid which is unstable and is known to exist only in aqueous solution.
CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% (10,000 ppm) will make some people feel drowsy. Concentrations of 7% to 10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
