An encyclopedia of the element that builds everything.
For billions of years, carbon has cycled through Earth's atmosphere -- a thin membrane of gas that regulates the planet's temperature and chemistry.
Pre-industrial CO2 concentration. The baseline of the Holocene, stable for 10,000 years.
Current atmospheric CO2. Higher than any point in 800,000 years of ice core records.
Total atmospheric carbon mass. A gossamer veil of molecules that determines our climate fate.
The ancient alchemy that transforms atmospheric carbon into living tissue. Every carbon atom in your body was once captured by a leaf.
Six molecules of carbon dioxide and six of water enter a chloroplast. Light energy reorganizes their atoms.
Glucose emerges: a ring of carbon atoms storing solar energy in chemical bonds. The foundation of all food chains.
Carbon weaves itself into the architecture of life: the double helix of DNA, the intricate folds of proteins, the rigid lattice of wood and bone.
The proportion of a human body that is carbon by mass. The second most abundant element in your body after oxygen.
Total carbon stored in Earth's terrestrial biomass. Forests hold most of it, locked in cellulose and lignin.
Through combustion, decomposition, and respiration, carbon returns to the atmosphere. The ancient cycle renews. Every breath you exhale sends carbon atoms on a journey that began in a dying star.
Annual carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Burning in seconds what took millions of years to store.
Age of Earth's carbon cycle. The same atoms have circled through rock, air, water, and life countless times.
The cycle continues.