Introduction
The topic of the paper is the carbon cycle, which includes its description and mentioning its key stages. Though the carbon cycle is barely noticeable for most people, it plays an important role in creating a habitable environment on the Earth. Therefore, the topic came from a closer overview of the environment that people live in and the substances on which they depend. Since climate changes may affect the carbon cycle and the lives of people drastically, the phenomenon deserves a detailed review. Occurring at a range of levels and influenced by human activities significantly, it needs a better focus and thorough analysis.
Search Process
I chose Google as the search engine and typed “carbon cycle” into the search field. The query returned approximately 2,830,000 results. Needless to say, Wikipedia was the first site that Google suggested in its top ten. To get the general idea of what I would be looking for, I browsed Wikipedia for the essential pieces of information.
Since Wikipedia offered the sources that dated back to 2008 and earlier, I decided to look for the necessary resources on Google Scholar, which is a repository of scholarly sources. First, I used the same phrase (“carbon cycle”) when searching for the article. However, the results returned by Google Scholar (657,000 items) were too general. By using the word “climate” as one of the keywords, I narrowed the search down to 226,000 results and located a scholarly article by Reichstein et al.
Results
According to the research implications, there is a direct connection between the carbon cycle and climate change. To be more exact, climate extremes, which can be observed currently, trigger a chain of interconnected effects that cause a change in the carbon balance in the environment. Furthermore, the rate of the carbon cycle and the percentage of carbon emissions depend largely on the type of climate change that occurs in the chosen area.
The authors of the article provide a brief description of the phenomenon of the carbon cycle, stressing that it implies the absorption of carbon dioxide emissions. According to Reichstein et al., the carbon cycle occurs primarily “via carbon accumulation in forest biomass and soils” (Reichstein et al. 287). The authors also provide a detailed description of the concept of climate variability, as well as the extremes, stressing that the latter phenomenon is typically viewed in the context of not only meteorological but also other essential variables, therefore, creating a complex environment, in which the carbon cycle extremes can be studied carefully.
Furthermore, the authors stress that, despite a large number of forests and the increase in the humidity rates that they allow for, drought is presently viewed as the factor that has the greatest impact on the pace and other characteristics of the carbon cycle. Moreover, the researchers conclude that climate extremes have the largest effect on the net climate variability, thus, contributing to the changes in the carbon cycle.
Therefore, the authors succeed in proving that the phenomenon of climate variability has a direct effect on the carbon cycle and the related processes. Enhancing the climate variability rates, the extremes create the environment, in which the carbon cycle is becoming increasingly fast. I believe that, by controlling the amount of CO2 emitted by vehicles manufacturing organizations, one will be able to affect the carbon cycle speed and magnitude, therefore, shaping the climate change rates. Therefore, the design of the tools that will help improve the carbon cycle process needs to be considered.
Works Cited
Reichstein, Markus, Michael Bahn, Philippe Ciais, Dorothea Frank, Miguel D. Mahecha, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Jakob Zscheischler, Christian Beer, Nina Buchmann, David C. Frank, Dario Papale, Anja Rammig, Pete Smith, Kirsten Thonicke, Marijn van der Velde, Sara Vicca, Ariane Walz and Martin Wattenbach. “Climate Extremes and the Carbon Cycle.” Nature 500.7462 (2013): 287-295. Print.