Answer Happy

2.1 Introduction The next questions deal with carbon in Earth's atmosphere and natural as well as anthropogenic emissions. Question 1 [5 points] One estimate puts the global amount of available fossil fuel reserves at 4000 Gt carbon (as elemental C). Suppsose that this amount of carbon would be burned into CO2, by how much would the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere increase? To answer this question, you need to refer to Table 1. To simplify things, you can assume that all the CO2 would go into the atmosphere. Your answer should be stated in Gt CO2. [hint: you are probably over-complicating the calculation if you end up using the mass of 1 AMU (1.66 x 10-27 kg) 1 Table 1: Atomic masses (rounded) for some isotopes. AMU: atomic mass units. Note that you may not need all of these data in your calculations. Item Mass Unit carbon (120) 12 AMU nitrogen (14N) 14 AMU oxygen (160) 16 AMU argon (40 Ar 40 AMU 1 AMU 1.66 x 10-27 kg Figure 1: Venus or Earth? Question 2 [5 points) The current atmospheric CO2 concentration is 400 ppmy, which corresponds to about 850 GTC (i.e. elemental carbon). By how much would the atmospheric CO2 concentration rise if we burned the fossil fuel reserves of 4000 GtC? Your answer should be stated in ppmy. Question 3 (5 points) By how much the oxygen concentration drop if we burned 4000 Gt fossil fuel reserves? State your answer in volume % or ppmy, whatever makes sense to you. Hint: first write down how carbon is chemically converted (combusted) into CO2.