Supplementary code and data for "Does the biosphere lift nutrients against gravity, or redirect solar energy? A thermodynamic reframing of planetary biogeowork
Description
This dataset accompanies the peer-reviewed Perspective article submitted to Earth System Dynamics (Copernicus Publications), which proposes a three-component decomposition of the biosphere's thermodynamic role in the Earth system: (i) active biogeowork W_A, the mechanical work performed using metabolic free energy derived from gross primary production; (ii) mediated biogeowork DeltaPhi_M, the solar-driven flux redirected through biological structures, dominated by the biogenic enhancement of latent heat flux DeltaLE_bio relative to an abiotic counterfactual land surface; and (iii) the resulting entropy-export enhancement DeltaSdot_bio. A dimensionless leverage ratio Lambda_bio = DeltaPhi_M / W_A quantifies the amplification by which biological infrastructure redirects solar energy per unit metabolic investment. The dataset contains: 1. PBGT_Supplementary.ipynb — a Jupyter notebook (Python 3.11) that reproduces every numerical claim in Section 3 of the paper, including the physical constants, reference fluxes from published datasets (Trenberth et al., 2009; Beer et al., 2010; Jasechko et al., 2013), the three biogeowork components, the leverage ratio, diagnostic quantities (gh/L_v and the gravitational potential energy of transpired water), and a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis (N = 100,000) propagating the three dominant uncertainty sources identified in Section 3.3 (mechanical-conversion efficiency eta_mech, biogenic fraction of latent heat flux f_bio, and effective radiating temperature T_rad). 2. figure01.pdf and figure01.png — Figure 1 of the manuscript (energy-flux hierarchy and biospheric leverage), generated by the notebook. The figure is styled for Earth System Dynamics (Copernicus) specifications: serif fonts (Times/STIX), Wong colorblind-safe palette with hatch patterns for grayscale accessibility, and 300 dpi output. 3. table1_global_estimates.csv — a machine-readable version of Table 1 of the manuscript (global estimates of biosphere thermodynamic components with symbols, central values, units, and source references). The notebook is self-contained: no external data files are required, and all source values are published literature constants cited inline. Execution takes under one minute on a standard laptop. Compatible with Google Colab and local Python 3.11+ installations. Dependencies: numpy, pandas, matplotlib (all included in standard scientific Python distributions). Reuse is encouraged under the CC BY 4.0 license. If this material contributes to your work, please cite the accompanying paper and this dataset via its DOI.