An international team of scientists concluded that humanity has already affected the global carbon cycle more strongly than the asteroid that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. This is reported by the publication Live Science.
Experts analyzed the data collected under the Deep Carbon Observatory program. They tracked changes in the carbon cycle over the past 500 million years. In the past, carbon fluxes remained stable most of the time, that is, the carbon dioxide that entered the atmosphere with volcanic eruptions was balanced with carbon that left and accumulated in the interior of the Earth. This, in turn, contributes to the formation of a climate suitable for maintaining high levels of biodiversity.
From time to time, this balance is upset by catastrophic events that lead to large emissions of greenhouse gases, global warming and mass extinctions. Scientists have identified four major disasters of this kind, including the fall of an asteroid 66 million years ago, as well as several massive volcanic eruptions.
Scientists emphasize that the burning of fossil fuels is currently contributing to a serious disruption of the carbon cycle. The total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by mankind per year outweighs the volume of the same gas emitted by all volcanoes of the Earth per year, at least 80 times. Even the amount of carbon dioxide that appeared in the atmosphere after the fall of the asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous period (about 1400 billion tons) is less than the amount released since 1750 (2000 billion tons).
According to the researchers, the anthropogenic impact will have the same effect on the biosphere as the largest cataclysms, causing a mass extinction.