Carbon dioxide ice caps, glaciers and seawater. It is present in deposits of petroleum and natural gas. Carbon dioxide is odorless at normally encountered concentrations. However, at high concentrations, it has a sharp and acidic odor. As the source of available carbon in the carbon cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide is the primary carbon source for life on Earth and its concentration in Earth's pre-industrial atmosphere since late in the Precambrian has been regulated by photosynthetic organisms and geological phenomena. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria use light energy to photosynthesize carbohydrate from carbon dioxide and water, with oxygen produced as a waste product. It
Ocean storage of carbon dioxide Earth's climate. This presents itself as a readily available carbon sink to store and capture atmospheric carbon dioxide. Due to the solubility of carbon dioxide in water, CO2 naturally dissolves in oceanic waters to form an equilibrium. With an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the position of equilibrium pushes the equilibrium in the direction such that more CO2 dissolves into the water. Utilizing this mechanism, more than 500 Gtons of carbon dioxide (amounting to a total of 140 Gtons of carbon) of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions released over the past 2 centuries have been absorbed