Photosynthesis converts ~100 billion tons of carbon per year

Land plants and ocean phytoplankton fix on the order of 100–120 billion tons of carbon each year through photosynthesis. That planetary metabolism is the foundation of nearly every food web on Earth.

Sunlight plus CO₂ and water become sugars and oxygen — a chemical industry running free across forests, fields, and seas. Disrupt it and climate, fisheries, and agriculture feel the shock.

Those tonnage figures are estimates that scientists refine with satellites and field data. Even as numbers update, the message holds: green and microscopic life quietly move carbon at civilization-scale rates.