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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 110, C09S05, doi:10.1029/2004JC002625, 2005

Fate of fossil fuel CO₂ in geologic time

David Archer

Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Abstract

A model of the ocean and seafloor carbon cycle is subjected to injection of new CO₂ pulses of varying sizes to estimate the resident atmospheric fraction over the coming 100 kyr. The model is used to separate the processes of air-sea equilibrium, an ocean temperature feedback, CaCO₃ compensation, and silicate weathering on the residual anthropogenic pCO₂ in the atmosphere at 1, 10, and 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of anthropogenic CO₂ is dominated by the long tail, resulting in a range of 30–35 kyr. The long lifetime of fossil fuel carbon release implies that the anthropogenic climate perturbation may have time to interact with ice sheets, methane clathrate deposits, and glacial/interglacial climate dynamics.

Received 26 July 2004; accepted 24 March 2005; published 21 September 2005.

Keywords: CO₂; lifetime; neutralization.

Index Terms: 1009 Geochemistry: Geochemical modeling (3610, 8410); 1030 Geochemistry: Geochemical cycles (0330); 1050 Geochemistry: Marine geochemistry (4835, 4845, 4850); 1051 Geochemistry: Sedimentary geochemistry.

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Citation: Archer, D. (2005), Fate of fossil fuel CO₂ in geologic time, J. Geophys. Res., 110, C09S05, doi:10.1029/2004JC002625.

Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.