EGUsphere

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/egusphere-2026-2579

Does the biosphere lift nutrients against gravity, or redirect solar energy? A thermodynamic reframing of planetary biogeowork

Kaneko

Shigeo

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3403-3659

independent researcher: Saitama, Japan

20 05 2026

2026 1 14

2026

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2579/

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We use the term biogeowork for the thermodynamic work performed by the biosphere in shaping the Earth's energy and entropy budgets – whether supplied by metabolism or mediated through biological structures. Biological work at the Earth's surface is often imagined as mass transport against gravity – from whale pumps to plant transpiration – yet this framing conflates fundamentally different energy pathways. The biosphere shapes these budgets far beyond its own metabolic energy supply, yet biological energy supply and biologically mediated solar fluxes have not been clearly separated in a single quantitative framework. We propose a three-component decomposition of the biosphere's thermodynamic role: (i) active biogeowork, WA, the mechanical work performed using metabolic free energy derived from gross primary production (GPP); (ii) mediated biogeowork, ΔΦM, the solar-driven flux redirected through biological structures – dominated by the biogenic enhancement of latent heat flux, ΔLEbio, relative to an abiotic counterfactual land surface; and (iii) the resulting entropy-export enhancement, ΔṠbio. Using published global datasets, we estimate WA ~ 1020 J yr−1 (≈2 % of GPP), ΔLEbio ~ 5 × 1023 J yr−1 (≈30 % of global latent heat flux of 1.3 × 1024 J yr−1), and ΔṠbio ~ 2 × 1020 J K−1 yr−1 (≈1–2 % of total planetary entropy production). The dimensionless leverage ratio Λbio &equiv; ΔΦM / WA ~ 5 × 103 (range: 3–7 × 103) quantifies the amplification by which biological infrastructure redirects solar energy per unit metabolic investment. The decomposition clarifies the distinct pathways through which the biosphere shapes the planetary energy budget, links biosphere degradation to planetary-scale thermodynamic consequences, and yields testable predictions connecting land-cover change, Bowen-ratio variability, and planetary-scale entropy export.