From Mud to Molecules: What Deep Sea Sediments Can Tell Us About Past Climates

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This video documents how scientists, using marine algae, can study climate change in the past to help understand potential effects of climate change in the future.

The process of photosynthesis converts light energy to stored chemical energy by converting carbon dioxide plus water into sugars plus released oxygen.

The main way that solar energy is captured and stored on Earth is through the complex chemical process known as photosynthesis.

Earth’s systems, being dynamic and interacting, cause feedback effects that can increase or decrease the original changes.

The foundation for Earth’s global climate systems is the electromagnetic radiation from the sun, as well as its reflection, absorption, storage, and redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and land systems, and this energy’s re-radiation into space.

The many dynamic and delicate feedbacks between the biosphere and other Earth systems cause a continual co-evolution of Earth’s surface and the life that exists on it.

The geologic record shows that changes to global and regional climate can be caused by interactions among changes in the sun’s energy output or Earth’s orbit, tectonic events, ocean circulation, volcanic activity, glaciers, vegetation, and human activities. These changes can occur on a variety of time scales from sudden (e.g., volcanic ash clouds) to intermediate (ice ages) to very long-term tectonic cycles.

Gradual atmospheric changes were due to plants and other organisms that captured carbon dioxide and released oxygen.

Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.

As a result of these chemical reactions, energy is transferred from one system of interacting molecules to another. Cellular respiration is a chemical process in which the bonds of food molecules and oxygen molecules are broken and new compounds are formed that can transport energy to muscles. Cellular respiration also releases the energy needed to maintain body temperature despite ongoing energy transfer to the surrounding environment.

Photoelectric materials emit electrons when they absorb light of a high-enough frequency.