Keeping Up With Carbon

  • Released Monday, October 12, 2009
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Carbon is all around us. This unique atom is the basic building block of life, and its compounds form solids, liquids, or gases. Carbon helps form the bodies of living organisms; it dissolves in the ocean; mixes in the atmosphere; and can be stored in the crust of the planet. A carbon atom could spend millions of years moving through this complex cycle. The ocean plays the most critical role in regulating Earth's carbon balance, and understanding how the carbon cycle is changing is key to understanding Earth's changing climate.

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For More Information

See http://climate.nasa.gov/esw

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, The SeaWiFS Project and GeoEye. NOTE: All SeaWiFS images and data presented on this web site are for research and educational use only. All commercial use of SeaWiFS data must be coordinated with GeoEye (NOTE: In January 2013, DigitalGlobe and GeoEye combined to become DigitalGlobe).

This page was originally published on Monday, October 12, 2009.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:54 PM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • Tides of Change: Earth's Changing Sink (ID: 2009095)
    Monday, October 12, 2009 at 4:00AM

Datasets used in this visualization

  • Global Biosphere [SeaStar: SeaWiFS]

    ID: 467
    Sensor: SeaWiFS

    SeaWiFS Global Biosphere is a combination of the Land NDVI and Chlorophyll Concentration data sets. All SeaWiFS images and data presented on this web site are for research and educational use only. All commercial use of SeaWiFS data must be coordinated with GeoEye.

    Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, The SeaWiFS Project and GeoEye, Scientific Visualization Studio. NOTE: All SeaWiFS images and data presented on this web site are for research and educational use only. All commercial use of SeaWiFS data must be coordinated with GeoEye (NOTE: In January 2013, DigitalGlobe and GeoEye combined to become one DigitalGlobe.).

    This dataset can be found at: http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/PRODUCTS/

    See all pages that use this dataset

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.