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Radiocarbon – A Unique Tracer of Global Carbon Cycle Dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Ingeborg Levin  and
Vago Hesshaimer
Ingeborg Levin
Affiliation:
Institut für Umweltphysik, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Email: Ingeborg.Levin@iup.uni-heidelberg.de.
Vago Hesshaimer
Affiliation:
Institut für Umweltphysik, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Email: Ingeborg.Levin@iup.uni-heidelberg.de.
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Climate on Earth strongly depends on the radiative balance of its atmosphere, and thus, on the abundance of the radiatively active greenhouse gases. Largely due to human activities since the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric burden of many greenhouse gases has increased dramatically. Direct measurements during the last decades and analysis of ancient air trapped in ice from polar regions allow the quantification of the change in these trace gas concentrations in the atmosphere. From a presumably “undisturbed” preindustrial situation several hundred years ago until today, the CO2 mixing ratio increased by almost 30% (Figure 1a) (Neftel et al. 1985; Conway et al. 1994; Etheridge et al. 1996). In the last decades this increase has been nearly exponential, leading to a global mean CO2 mixing ratio of almost 370 ppm at the turn of the millennium (Keeling and Whorf 1999).

Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 69 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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