The Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE) project is an initiative to unite scientists around the world to make tangible advances towards quantifying the amount of carbon outgassed from the Earth's deep interior (core, mantle, crust) into the surface environment (e.g. biosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere) through naturally occurring processes.
Volcanoes are the main pathway in which deeply sourced volatiles, including carbon, are transferred from the Earth's interior to the surface environment.
[1] An additional, though less well understood, pathway includes along faults and fractures within the Earth's crust,[2] often referred to as tectonic degassing.
The implications of this may mean that carbon concentrations in the surface environment have increased over Earth's history, which has a significant impact on climate change.
Findings from the DECADE project will increase our understanding of how carbon cycles through deep Earth, and patterns in volcanic emissions data could potentially alert scientists to an impending eruption.