From the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory:
Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in today’s issue of Nature.
The scientists also calculated the total amount of carbon dioxide flowing from soils, which is about 10-15 percent higher than previous measurements. That number — about 98 petagrams of carbon a year (or 98 billion metric tons) — will help scientists build a better overall model of how carbon in its many forms cycles throughout the Earth. Understanding soil respiration is central to understanding how the global carbon cycle affects climate.
“There’s a big pulse of carbon dioxide coming off of the surface of the soil everywhere in the world,” said ecologist Ben Bond-Lamberty of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “We weren’t sure if we’d be able to measure it going into this analysis, but we did find a response to temperature.”
The increase in carbon dioxide given off by soils — about 0.1 petagram (100 million metric tons) per year since 1989 — won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect unless it comes from carbon that had been locked away out of the system for a long time, such as in Arctic tundra. This analysis could not distinguish whether the carbon was coming from old stores or from vegetation growing faster due to a warmer climate. But other lines of evidence suggest warming is unlocking old carbon, said Bond-Lamberty, so it will be important to determine the sources of extra carbon.
The Opposite of Photosynthesis
Plants are famous for photosynthesis, the process that stores energy in sugars built from carbon dioxide and water. Photosynthesis produces the oxygen we breathe as a byproduct. But plants also use oxygen and release carbon dioxide in the same manner that people and animals do. Soil respiration includes carbon dioxide from both plants and soil microbes, and is a major component of the global carbon cycle.
Theoretically, the biochemical reactions that plants and soil microbes engage in to produce carbon dioxide suggest that higher temperatures should result in more carbon dioxide being released. But unlike the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, soil respiration can’t be measured from space and can’t yet be simulated effectively with computer models.
So, the researchers turned to previous studies to see if they could quantify changes in global soil respiration. PNNL’s Bond-Lamberty and his colleague Allison Thomson, working at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., examined 439 soil respiration studies published between 1989 and 2008.
They compiled data about how much carbon dioxide has leaked from plants and microbes in soil in an openly available database. To maintain consistency, they selected only data that scientists collected via the now-standard methods of gas chromatography and infrared gas analysis. The duo compared 1,434 soil carbon data points from the studies with temperature and precipitation data in the geographic regions from other climate research databases.
After subjecting their comparisons to statistical analysis, the researchers found that the total amount of carbon dioxide being emitted from soil in 2008 was more than in 1989. In addition, the rise in global temperatures correlated with the rise in global carbon flux. However, they did not find a similar relation between precipitation and carbon.
Zooming In
Previous climate change research shows that Arctic zones have a lot more carbon locked away than other regions. Using the complete set of data collected from the studies, the team estimated that the carbon released in northern — also called boreal — and Arctic regions rose by about 7 percent; in temperate regions by about 2 percent; and in tropical regions by about 3 percent, showing a trend consistent with other work.
The researchers wanted to know if their data could provide more detailed information about each region. So they broke down the complete data set by regional climates and re-examined the smaller groups of data using different statistical methods. The regional data from the temperate and tropical climates produced results consistent with other results, such as more carbon being released at higher temperatures, but the boreal-Arctic climate data did not. In addition, removing only 10 percent of the boreal-Arctic data points was enough to invalidate the statistical significance of the boreal-Arctic result. Together, the results support the idea that more boreal data on regional climates is needed to reach statistical relevance.
“We identified an area where we need to do more work,” said Thomson.
The authors designed the database so that other researchers could contribute to it. The paper describing the database can be found online in Biogeosciences.
Reference: Bond-Lamberty and Thomson, 2010. Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record, Nature March 25, 2009, doi:10.1038/nature08930.
This research was supported by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
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What they are PROVING is our planet’s gases are building-up in our biosphere.
Due to rotation, the gases build-up and push against the atmosphere, not down on the planet.
The ocean’s surface salinity changes is theorized to be from evaporation. If that were the case then all the ocean would be effected an not just the surface.
Our planet pulls the atmosphere and adding more density can change speed of the atmosphere being pulled along.
This study goes hand in glove with Cap and Trade. That is, every time a farmer tils his soil he is responsible for adding to the GHGs. Solution: tax the person who feeds the world. Perhaps there shall be a gardening tax levied in the near future. Think I’m kidding?
Surely we know roughly how much C02 is in the atmosphere, so this does not affect the previous results (the carbon that came from soil must have been accredited to something else to make the figures add up). Although this will presumably be added to the models for the future predictions because it is positive feedback.
Do the models already include the increased c02 absorption by plants with increased c02 and temperature.? The discussion on tree ring data seemed to imply that it is not known if the growth is proportional to temperature. Presumably this is not linear either, as there can only be so much c02 in the soil (if it is absorbed and re-emitted by the plant, surely it would make more sense to calculate it as part of the plant absorption).
There is no way to escape from armageddon!, I suspect all that earth´s bad breath is originated only in the US, as the soil is being poisoned by your peeing after drinking too much Kool-Aid.
@ferdinand meeus Engelbeen
Two important differences with the lab test: seawater is not fresh water and the driving force (the pCO2 difference) is very, very much lower than in the labtest. We are speaking about a globally average difference of 7 microatm between atmosphere and ocean surfaces, not one (or several) atmosphere(s) as in the lab flask…
I’m not talking just about ocean surfaces. Think about clouds. Think about what happens when it rains. We’ve got fresh water in droplet form (high surface to volume ratio) thoroughly mixing with the air. It would scrub CO_2 from the air quite efficiently.
Sincerely you should stop all that crazy kind of “research”, that´s throwing the money in the sewage!
This is great news! I was worried that the progressives were going to run out of things to tax,,, death, health care, air and now co2 breathing soil.
I can’t wait.
@BC Bob (21:38:32) :
“Isn’t it amazing what researchers find when it relates to climate change? No matter what, you can rest assured that it’s all bad, and that further research is required.”
(Bold added by me)
Thank you BC Bob. You’ve just given us all a very handy, very green acronym that will save thousands of keystrokes and trillions of electrons.
IABAFRR (It’s all bad and further reasearch is required.)
Best news I heard today. I am excited. Soils become richer when manure, dead stalks leaves etc decompose and rot. This composting action is how soils become more fertile.
Example:
Near a river we have previous flooded areas which are the dark rich bottom land.
This has very high nutrient and carbon content. Decay of dead trees and leaves are a step in the soil replentishment process in forrests. This releases CO2 and CH4.
The bed wetting urban dwelling scientists don’t understand the cycles in the biosphere and scare easily.
I have read some very abusinve methods of farming suggested by the not smart folks pushing ethanol. Over time the deep rich loam soails will become exhausted. How much CO2 is released by the Sahara dessert?
Is that a sign of great producing land?
By the way, when moisture is missing, CO2 output falls.
Nick Stokes (21:27:02) :
100 million tons CO2 per year is equivalent to burning about 30 million tons C. We burn about 300 times more than that in fossil fuel.
==============
I think you are confusing the total increase (since 1989) with the rate of increase (of the increase). In any case, their own statements contradict each other by a factor of 5.
First they say that the “total amount of carbon dioxide flowing from soils is about 10-15 percent higher than previous measurements.” And they add that “this number is 98 petagrams of carbon a year (or 98 billion metric tons).”
So, assuming a 12.5% increase (i.e. halfway between 10 and 15) this puts “previous measurements” at about 87, so we have an increase of 11 petagrams since “previous measurments”
Which means the *rate* of increase since 1989 would be 11/21 or about 0.5 petagrams per year.
But one paragraph down they say that “the increase in carbon dioxide given off by soils is about 0.1 petagram (100 million metric tons) per year since 1989.”
Which is 5 times below what can be inferred from what they had just said in the previous paragraph. I wonder who writes this stuff??
As with most of this nonsense, the noise massively overshadows the trend. I hereby pledge $1,000 to anyone who can convince me that it does not in this case.
I am looking forward to reading a great many studies of the ‘peer-reviewed’ literature of this era in my dotage, discussing how science can be so easily derailed and statistics can be made to falsify reality.
I am sure they will be asking for more funding and pandering to the latest ‘trendy’ scare that millions of mindless morons are getting their daily fear fix from. Give it a rest – coffee is easier and cheaper, people.
Frankly, so what or should that be so watt
100 million tons is like the attempts to blame Volcanoes with emission of less than 300 million tons per year
Human emissions are ~30 BILLION tons per year and rising
This is kind of ridiculous. It is only one small component of one side of the equation.
Plants and soils are absorbing about 122 GTs (petragrams or billion tonnes) of Carbon each year and releasing 120 GTs.
[The atomic weight of CO2 is 44 while Carbon only makes up 12 of that 44 – We are talking about Carbon and the Carbon Cycle here. In CO2 terms, plants and soils are absorbing about 447 GTs of CO2 and releasing 440 GTs of CO2 each year.]
Plants and soils are are taking in 2 GTs of the 8.5 GTs of Carbon we are releasing each year.
[Oceans are absorbing another 92 GTs per year and releasing 90 GTs].
Furthermore, the ratio that plants and soils and oceans are absorbing of our Carbon emissions has stayed at close to that 50% rate even as our emissions have increased over the last 150 years.
So, a 0.1 GT change in one small component of the Carbon Cycle is more-or-less meaningless especially when plants and soils and oceans are absorbing a net 4.0 GTs (and that rises each year as our emissions and the concentration in the atmosphere increases).
So maybe the rate that soils emit Carbon has increased by 0.1 GTs, but the rate that soils are absorbing Carbon has increased by 0.2 GTs. The climate scientists never tell the whole story. It is always slanted to scare.
It’s a small victory, but maybe only a Pyrrhic one:
The premise remains the same: carbon dioxide is a ‘pollutant’ that is responsible for ‘climate change’.
And Crap and Tax is not quite moribund, either. Two of the most bull-headed fools in the Senate, John Faux Kerry and Lindsay Grahamnesty, are working hard to bring it back to life.
Fortunately, there are Senators from coal and oil producing states who will resist. Maybe the trick is to get the Senators from agricultural states to join in. After all, CO2 is plant food!
We will not have won the war until the Congress (forget the Great Pretender in the Oval Office) stands up as a body and declares, “Carbon dioxide is good for plants, good for the planet, and good for you!”
/Mr Lynn
Luke (22:13:55) : wrote
The problem with tropical rainforrest sequestration is time-scales, they are so biologically active that any carbon-sinking of organic materials only lasts for years, and barely decades but certainly not centuries or millennia. Any dead-fall from the trees or plants only last a year or two before being completely decomposed. When a section or Forrest is cleared, the land becomes infertile in a couple years because all the organics are consumed that quickly; that’s why the WWF’s carbon-offset scheme down there is so bogus! Now ocean dead-zones, that’s where carbon is really sunk. Algae sucks up the CO2, makes 30% vegetable oil, dies, sinks gets cover in silt that becomes shale and in a million year you get petroleum oil back!
“…soils add 100 million tons of CO2 per year”
Ah, all that wonderful marvelous life gas, without which all life on earth would perish. Give us more! Give us more! Swathe our globe in a warm blanket of magical life-giving gas. The earth breathes! Men rejoice!
“After subjecting their comparisons to statistical analysis, the researchers found that the total amount of carbon dioxide being emitted from soil in 2008 was more than in 1989”
There’s some Canadian guy these people need to consult with?
Since at least the pre-Cambrian era some 550-million years ago, atmospheric oxygen accumulation has gone hand-in-hand with CO2 absorption/emission in self-sustaining cycles amenable to measurement on geophysical time-scales. (The Chixculub meteor-strike 65 million years ago burned off near two-thirds of the atmospheric oxygen that fueled the dinosaurs.) On this basis, three general principles apply: Punctuated Equilibrium, the Principle of Mediocrity, and Regression-to-the-Mean.
Punctuated Equilibrium illustrates “persistence”: The fact that long-term phenomena tend to remain unchanged until extraneous shocks force abrupt transitions in radically altered circumstances. The so-called Principle of Mediocrity asserts that, in any given case, odds are high that conditions approximate a long-term mean. Regression simply states that, absent generally unpredictable phase-shifts, abnormal circumstances will tend to equilibrium, clustering about persistent means.
In this 2.6-million year Pleistocene Era, periodic glaciations averaging 102,000 years are regularly interspersed by warming episodes of a median 12,250 years. At present, Equilibrium plus Mediocrity has defined our Holocene Interglacial Epoch since the Younger Dryas “cold shock” c. BC 8800 (a 1,500-year astronomical rather than climatic or geophysical event
ending c. BC 7300, i.e. 9,300 years-before-present [YBP]). So regardless of a 500-year Medieval Warm period (c. AD 850 – 1350) compensated by an offsetting Little Ice Age (c. 1375 – 1890), Earth’s recent temperatures exhibit a millennial fluctuation quite in accord with statistical expectations.
The problem we now face is that, absent the Younger Dryas, Earth’s Long Summer would likely have ended c. AD 500, coincident with the Fall of Rome. In other words, the Holocene Interglacial is 1,500 years past-due to “punctuate”, that is, to shift abruptly to a typical Pleistocene chill-phase engendering miles-deep continental ice sheets persisting some 102,000 years. Now on the threshold of a 20-year “dead sun” Dalton if not a 70-year Maunder Minimum, to let peculating Luddite Climate Cultists –the Green Gang of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al.– purposefully continue sabotaging Earth’s global energy economies is akin to embracing global civilization’s suicide.
fhsiv (00:01:19) :
While your ‘new’ concrete may have a favorable albedo, it is carbon intensive to manufacture. All that blasting, mucking, hauling, crushing, and sorting requires the combustion of lots of fossil fuel. Not to mention the tremendous amounts of CO2 liberated in the calcining of portland cement.
Good point, and would of course have to be considered before one seriously entertained that idea in the real world ; )
…but if one could put aside CO2 for a second, the point I was driving at is that per the math – that I have found at least – driving the climate models, one would expect a concrete patio to be as cool or cooler than the surrounding lawn.
Someone please correct me on this! I have been trying to find where they have accounted for this, and the only evaporative effect representation I have been able to find is Trenberth’s global average (described above)
H.R. (06:11:05) : I think that acronym would better work as MRR or MSIW (More Silly Ideas Welcomed).
et. al.,
“An increasing global RS value does not necessarily constitute a positive feedback to the atmosphere, as it could be driven by higher carbon inputs to soil rather than by mobilization of stored older carbon. The available data are, however, consistent with an acceleration of the terrestrial carbon cycle in response to global climate change.”
The above is the most important (reveling?) sentence in the writ-up. They HAD TO CREATE a difference between types of carbon. Why? Because if they didn’t then their study would show IT CAN NOT BE CO2 THAT IS DRIVING ANY GLOBAL TEMPERATURE INCREASE!
“….terrestrial carbon cycle in response to global climate change.” There it is in nut shell! If all CO2 is alike AND the global warming models are correct, then THAT sentence would HAVE TO READ, “…. consistent with the increases in global temperatures in response to an acceleration of the terrestrial carbon cycle.”
But then they would have to explain why we do not have a run-away system and situation. And the ONLY explanation for that is – increase density of CO2 has an unmeasurable effect on global atmospheric temperature average.
So there has to be good CO2 and bad CO2 – opps, I mean, ROTTEN CO2. I forgot how we all here are suppose to use only scientific terms.
Hey wait! I see opportunity here. Maybe I’ll write a grant for a few million bucks to come with a scientific explanation as to how IR radiation knows the difference. I can see the WUWT headline 4 yrs from now – “New Study Shows IR Radiation Has Intelligence Level Equal To Most Scientists.”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I KNOW most scientists ARE really good – people. WE, collectively – the human race, world wide – are to blame for this type of report. When “scientists” are beholding and work for politicians why would we expect their work product to be – anything other than whatever is expected of them. Wasn’t it Henry VI who said to his science advisor, “Be beholding or be beheaded.”???
Why is this being treated as news? We know from ice core data that after a rise in temperature there is an increase in CO2.
In trying to find what is the reason why these post normal scientist usually arrive at such wird conclusion is that they work in closed air conditioned/central heated environments, where the same air is recycled, so noxious emanations from all the body holes, specially H2S, CH4, and CO2 increase, altering the behaviour of those anthopopithecus subjected to this peculiar kind of nasty atmosphere.Then It would be advisable to add some chemical canisters filters (containing LiOH or NaOH/KOH, activated carbon) to the system as to provide some neutralization of the above quoted gases.
Being subject to this kind of atmosphere surely provokes a projection/generalization making themselves believe the same happends outside their confinement.
fhsiv @ur momisugly 21:59:00 asked:
“By the way, does the sun still rise in the east?”
I hate to disapoint you but the sun doesn’t rise, let alone rise in the east.
Molds are used to obtain Citric Acid from glucose and if CO2 is present as carbonates they change it into succinic acid:
if these organisms are grown submerged in well-aerated glucose solutions containing CaCO3, appreciable quantities of succinic acid are formed together with noticeable amounts of acetaldehyde and acetic acid.
Just in case some Global Warmer Fanatic wants to reduce CO2:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC533661/pdf/jbacter00816-0034.pdf