Readers may recall these WUWT stories: Earth’s biosphere booming, California’s giant redwoods inconveniently respond to increased carbon dioxide, and Forget deforestation: The world’s woodland is getting denser and change could help combat climate change. NASA satellite imagery pointed this out long ago.
Now confirmation from another source: From the University of Colorado at Boulder
Earth absorbing more carbon, even as CO2 emissions rise, says CU-Boulder-led study
Planet’s carbon uptake doubles in past 50 years, researchers ponder how long trend can continue
Despite sharp increases in carbon dioxide emissions by humans in recent decades that are warming the planet, Earth’s vegetation and oceans continue to soak up about half of them, according to a surprising new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The study, led by CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Ashley Ballantyne, looked at global CO2 emissions reports from the past 50 years and compared them with rising levels of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere during that time, primarily because of fossil fuel burning. The results showed that while CO2 emissions had quadrupled, natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years, lessening the warming impacts on Earth’s climate.
“What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ballantyne. “How long this will continue, we don’t know.”
A paper on the subject will be published in the Aug. 2 issue of Nature. Co-authors on the study include CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, CU-Boulder doctoral student Caroline Alden and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists John Miller and Pieter Tans. Miller also is a research associate at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
According to Alden, the trend of sinks gulping atmospheric carbon cannot continue indefinitely. “It’s not a question of whether or not natural sinks will slow their uptake of carbon, but when,” she said.
“We’re already seeing climate change happen despite the fact that only half of fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere while the other half is drawn down by the land biosphere and oceans,” Alden said. “If natural sinks saturate as models predict, the impact of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 will double.”
Ballantyne said recent studies by others have suggested carbon sinks were declining in some areas of the globe, including parts of the Southern Hemisphere and portions of the world’s oceans. But the new Nature study showed global CO2 uptake by Earth’s sinks essentially doubled from 1960 to 2010, although increased variations from year-to-year and decade-to-decade suggests some instability in the global carbon cycle, he said.
White, who directs CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, likened the increased pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere to a car going full throttle. “The faster we go, the more our car starts to shake and rattle,” he said. “If we drive 100 miles per hour, it is going to shake and rattle a lot more because there is a lot more instability, so it’s probably time to back off the accelerator,” he said. “The same is true with CO2 emissions.”
The atmospheric CO2 levels were measured at 40 remote sites around the world by researchers from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., including stations at the South Pole and on the Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii.
Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere primarily by fossil fuel combustion and by forest fires and some natural processes, said Ballantyne. “When carbon sinks become carbon sources, it will be a very critical time for Earth,” said Ballantyne. “We don’t see any evidence of that yet, but it’s certainly something we should be looking for.”
“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
Despite the enormous uptake of carbon by the planet, CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed from about 280 parts per million just prior to the Industrial Revolution to about 394 parts per million today, and the rate of increase is speeding up. The global average of atmospheric CO2 is expected to reach 400 ppm by 2016, according to scientists.
The team used several global CO2 emissions reports for the Nature study, including one by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. They concluded that about 350 billion tons of carbon — the equivalent of roughly 1 trillion tons of CO2 — had been emitted as a result of fossil fuel burning and land use changes from 1959 to 2010, with just over half moving into sinks on land or in the oceans.
According to the study, the scientists observed decreased CO2 uptake by Earth’s land and oceans in the 1990s, followed by increased CO2 sequestering by the planet from 2000 to 2010. “Seeing such variation from decade to decade tells us that we need to observe Earth’s carbon cycle for significantly longer periods in order to help us understand what is occurring,” said Ballantyne.
Scientists also are concerned about the increasing uptake of CO2 by the world’s oceans, which is making them more acidic. Dissolved CO2 changes seawater chemistry by forming carbonic acid that is known to damage coral, the fundamental structure of coral reef ecosystems that harbor 25 percent of the world’s fish species.
The study was funded by the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation and NOAA.
A total of 33.6 billion tons of CO2 were emitted globally in 2010, climbing to 34.8 billion tons in 2011, according to the International Energy Agency. Federal budget cuts to U.S. carbon cycle research are making it more difficult to measure and understand both natural and human influences on the carbon cycle, according to the research team.
“The good news is that today, nature is helping us out,” said White also a professor in CU’s geological sciences department. “The bad news is that none of us think nature is going to keep helping us out indefinitely. When the time comes that these carbon sinks are no longer taking up carbon, there is going to be a big price to pay.”
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No doubt, with increasing CO2, there is rising mental instability for many “scientists”.
Someone needs to tell people that CO2 cools the atmosphere. It doesn’t warm it.
http://jinancaoblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/blog-post.html
Wait till the cooling from this Grand Minimum kicks the ocean temperature down a notch or 2. When the oceans start absorbing more CO2 it should fall to the dismay of the plants and the warmists.
The authors have provided so much speculation and fact-free comparisons (. . . likened the increased pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere to a car going full throttle.) that science suffers in the telling.
“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
out of equilibrium
I wonder what and when equilibrium was?
“Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere primarily by fossil fuel combustion and by forest fires and some natural processes,”
This is a load of hooey, ……
“The good news is nature is helping us out” . Translation; we haven’t got clue one.
Hmm. I never knew Debbie Downer worked for the University of Colorado at Boulder: http://www.hulu.com/watch/68225 (gotta love the global warming reference in the vid)
Goldilocks is very picky, according to scientists.
“According to the study, the scientists observed decreased CO2 uptake by Earth’s land and oceans in the 1990s, followed by increased CO2 sequestering by the planet from 2000 to 2010”
During the 90s and up to 2000 the oceans were gaining energy as a result of more sunlight reaching the oceans during a period of reducing global cloudiness. That reduced their capacity to hold CO2 so the rate of uptake decreased.
After about 2000 cloudiness began to increase, ocean energy gain seems to have stopped and they now say that uptake has been increasing since 2000 which suggests that the oceans may now be cooling.
The above scenario is consistent with ocean temperature changes being in control of CO2 amounts in the air and not human emissions.
Furthermore the above extract appears inconsistent with:
“natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years”
So which is it:
i) A decrease in uptake up to 2000 then a rise in uptake since then
or
ii) A doubling of uptake over the past 50 years.
or possibly they mean that despite the 90s decrease the trend over 50 years has been a doubling ?
Either way the ocean would be in control because of the cooling period of the 50’s 60s and 70s which would have naturally increased the ocean uptake due to lower ocean temperatures.
The cooler oceans pre 1990 plus the cooler oceans since 2000 must have more than offset the effect of the warming oceans in the 90s for a net doubling of uptake over the 50 year period despite the reduction in uptake of the 90s.
Looks like atmospheric CO2 could be tightly related to ocean SSTS as modulated by the positive or negative Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation with a longer term solar induced ocean warming trend in the background as we recover from the low levels of solar activity of the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age.
Thus there may well be proportionately large natural swings in atmospheric CO2 between times such as the MWP and LIA and the current warm period but for some reason it is hardly picked up by the ice core record at all but picked up slightly better (but not completely) by the stomata record.
Maybe it is all completely natural ?
From the abstract:
Will be interesting to read. The abstract sounds much less alarming than the press release.
After all, the CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere is not new but recycled. Why should not the carbon cycle react to the increasing levels as it has in the past? I really do not see why it would not. Just think of the early Carboniferous when CO2 levels were much higher than today. Huge amounts of Limestone were deposited to remove the excess CO2 and large deposits of coal removed carbon from the atmosphere. Rather than the greenhouse effect taking over, an Ice Age started in the late Carboniferous! In fact compared to other geologic times, the earth’s current atmosphere is CO2 impoverished. Just think of the methane and CO2 levels in the Precambrian. The earth did not heat up and destroy itself, plant activity was stimulated, extracting CO2 and pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.
According to Alden, the trend of sinks gulping atmospheric carbon cannot continue indefinitely. “It’s not a question of whether or not natural sinks will slow their uptake of carbon, but when,” she said.
“We’re already seeing climate change happen despite the fact that only half of fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere while the other half is drawn down by the land biosphere and oceans,” Alden said. “If natural sinks saturate as models predict, the impact of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 will double.”
It is sad that a researcher cannot find something they didn’t know about or fully understand, and then turn right around and say that if the new fact were not true, things would be worse than they are. It must be very hard on these people to continuously have their core believe system attacked from all sides.
Still blaming CO2 though, sigh …
“What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ballantyne. “How long this will continue, we don’t know.”
Uh huh, we provide the food, the plants respond by growing. And considering that we are, geologically speaking, living in a period of extreme poverty of atmospheric CO2, the more we get into the atmosphere, the better.
“Planet’s carbon uptake doubles in past 50 years…”
The reason for this is that plants are growing quicker, bigger and are able to resist disease better. They are also less prone to drought problems as at higher levels of CO2 they use water more efficiently.
What’s the betting that these ‘saviours of the planet’ double their carbon uptake once again, but in just half the historic period, or 25 years? We just need to keep burning as much fossil fuel as possible to help them achieve this goal. Thriving vegetation is a prerequisite of a thriving, diverse biosphere. We need to celebrate the extra CO2, not denigrate it.
A couple hundred million years of non saturating carbon sinks vs. one wild-assed guess that there is such an event. Guess who has burden of proof?
This is one of the most idiotic statements I’ve seen in quite a while. This professor of geology ought to talk to his colleagues in the biology department about how CO2 concentrations are not far above starvation levels for plants.
I’m amazed at what the esteemed Dr Ballantyne seems to be saying by this comment: “It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
Does that mean that he thinks that carbon is created from burning fossil fuels? He seems to be confusing carbon compounds. I thought the big beef the warmists had was with CO2, not C as an element. If it’s carbon they want to eliminate then I think we’re all done for.
If they are right, there is a lag and mother nature will catch up and start sequestering CO2 like crazy.
If the whole world jumped ont he shale gas bandwagon and cut CO2 by 40% (due to gas producing less CO2 per joule of energy), CO2 would go down.
I wonder if there is an opposite lag? Would CO2 drop to low levels for a while?
How can anyone justify concerns about human CO2 emissions driving global temperatures when 96.5 percent of annual emissions are from natural sources? More
Quoting Ashely Ballantyne: “But the new Nature study showed global CO2 uptake by Earth’s sinks essentially doubled from 1960 to 2010, although increased variations from year-to-year and decade-to-decade suggests some instability in the global carbon cycle, he said.”
No Ash, despite your beliefs, variability (what you describe here) does not immediately imply instability. Demonstrate for me a divergent trend (and no, not with a simplistic model), and then we can discuss instability. I swear, climate scientists should have to pass advanced control systems courses to get their credentials, because not enough understand the facts about closed loop systems and how we measure/quantify their performance.
@orkneylad – well phrased. “CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere is not new but recycled”
This means that the WORLD survived the huge amount of CO2 or we wouldn’t be here.
“Recycled” gets a new meaning 😉
If people are only adding 3-5% of the total amount of CO2 to the total load each year, and all the carbon sinks have doubled their uptake, seems to me the CO2 concentration should be dropping. Or have all the natural sources of CO2 also doubled their output?
To claim that the CO2 sinks are probably very near their saturation point and imply that mankind is nearing the brink of extinction at any moment now doesn’t square with history. The carbon sinks managed to gobble up all the extra CO2 even when the world was at 6000ppm and life continued to flourish.
So human emissions have quadrupled in the last 50 years and human emissions account for less than 4% of the total CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Yet, carbon sinks have doubled their intake of CO2 in general, or just doubled the intake of human emitted CO2? Smart sinks?
“Despite sharp increases in carbon dioxide emissions by humans in recent decades that are warming the planet, …”
It makes me wanna puke if I read such an outright crap.
Mathematically
If X = mans CO2 output and Y = natures CO2 output and Z= natures CO2 sinks
then net rise in CO2 = X +Y-Z
since warmists imply that all the increase in CO2 is due to man and the world would be at equilibrium if not for man, then Y =Z.
Now if X increases to at most only .05 of Y, but Z doubles, then
.CO2 concentratiopn change -> 05Y +Y -2Z => 1.05Y – 2Y = -.95Y. CO2 would be dropping fast!