North American Carbon Program CH. Support long-term quantitative measurements of fluxes, sources, and sinks of atmospheric CO and CH, and develop forecasts for future trends. The North American Carbon Program was designed to help with the process of providing data needed to model the synthesis activities. The carbon cycle is subdivided into two sections, the rapid carbon exchange, and long-term cycling of carbon through the various geological processes. This carbon cycle occurs in our biological processes, including respiration, photosynthesis, and is generated by autotrophs. Autotrophs (usually photosynthetic) are plants or algae, which capture the carbon dioxide from the air. In water, the compounds removed
Carbon dioxide emissions – primarily from use of fossil fuels and deforestation – have rapidly increased its concentration in the atmosphere, leading to global warming. Carbon dioxide also causes ocean acidification because it dissolves in water to form carbonic acid. Carbon dioxide was the first gas to be described as a discrete substance. In about 1640, the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont observed that when he burned charcoal in a closed vessel, the mass of the resulting ash was much less than that of the original charcoal. His interpretation was that the rest of the charcoal had been transmuted into an