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.
So what. Tax people that own land?
How does this compare when they claim the earth was covered with bogs and the vegetation was brewing itself into petroleum?
We will always have decomposition yield CO2. Actually it improves when we have moisture. Not much rotting action in the desert.
Starbuck (06:37:02) :
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
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Well, I’ve just realized there is further confusion generated by this article, because they switch back and forth between CARBON and CO2. So the discrepancy I thought I spotted in my previous post looks even worse.
To clarify things in this mighty sloppy mess. 1 petagram = 1 gigaton = 1 billion tons.
And 1 unit of carbon = 3.67 units of CO2 by weight (44/12)
[By the way, the figure I keep seeing for human emissions is about 6.5 billion tons of CARBON /year, which would be about 24 billion tons of CO2 (not 30)]
Anyway, the reported increase in annual soil emission by these researches is about 11 billion tons of CARBON since 1989, based on the fact that they report a 10-15 percent increase since “previous measurements” with current measurements given as 98 billion tons of carbon per year (see my earlier post).
So, those 11 billion tons of carbon are the equivalent of about 40 billion tons of CO2.
This would mean soil emissions have been increasing at a rate of some 2 billion tons per year (of CO2) since 1989, if you go by their first statement.
Or they have been increasing at 100 million per year if you go by their second statement. That’s only a 20-fold difference. But remember this science is infinitely elastic, so it does not matter. Take your pick.
I wonder if am overlooking something, but that’s how I see it.
Whatever the rate of increase is, it is indeed meaningless without considering the increase on the other side. We know the net balance of natural processes is a sink. And we know the sinks intake has been increasing because they keep taking about half of our emissions, which have increased since then.
More crap research from a crap science published in a crap journal. No surprises here.
“Plants are famous for photosynthesis…”
No, no really, no photographs, but I will be signing autographs
after the show. Snookie?….she’s nothing…..
Re: Francisco (Mar 26 09:03),
They’re mixing annual respiration, which is indeed on the order of 98 Pg carbon/year with net emission of 0.1 Pg carbon. Respiration is in approximate balance annually so they’re just fiddling around at the edges. And they’re neglecting the unknown sink which is absorbing ~1 Pg carbon/year. So if we’ve underestimated net emission from the soil, we’ve also underestimated the absorption rate of the unknown sink. It’s basically a wash and certainly isn’t newsworthy.
DesertYote (21:46:21) : So are reproductive rates of microorganisms. Metabolic rates of current organisms increases + new organisms added to the mix = increase of CO2 via respiration pathways. Which is what we see happening and it didn’t take a funded study to figure that out.
Soon they will be asking each bacteria on the planet to pay tax.
It will be an orgasmic experience when I DO NOT SEE any more BS on CO2. Dreaming of the day… So entirely OVER this BS argument.
COWGATE
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100031389/now-its-cowgate-expert-report-says-claims-of-livestock-causing-global-warming-are-false/
Now it’s CowGate: expert report says claims of livestock causing global warming are false
COULD WE RUN OUT OF GATES?
There are two main ways that (IF AGWT is correct) a true climate catastrophe could develop, and both involve positive feedback loops– one to CO2 and one to methane. This is ultimate danger and the ultimate “alarmist” position.
Undoubtedly, CO2 and Methane are rising, and also being emitted from the soils, peat bogs, ocean beds, etc, but:
1) Are they rising due to the establishment of a positive feedback loop to anthropogenic GH gas emissions?
2) Are they rising enough to affect the global climate beyond natural variability?
3) Are they rising enough to trigger some kind of positive feedback induced climate nightmare scenario?
The answers to #1 and #2 may be strictly academic. The answer to #3, while perhaps likely to be “no”, is obviously important enough to study to see what the chances are that it is “yes”.
kwik (10:51:53) :
Soon they will be asking each bacteria on the planet to pay tax
It’s not only paying taxes, that is only a small part of the story, it is about POWER, big money, and we, commoners, we don’t even imagine what’s that. (I just can’t figure out what is it the need for power and exorbitant amounts of money, for what?). Evidently we lack a gene or something like that, that people like traditional banking families inherit in their blood, while others eagerly seek for being their servants, like Al Baby or J.Coal Trains H. ; frankly unexplainable, but thus is our world.
The trouble comes when their eagerness increases so much as to begin affecting our simple lives, that’s when, as history shows, they awaken our self defense instintcs and they end up as always, crying for momie to help them.
DeWitt Payne (10:21:15) :
Now that make sense. Thanks for the clarification. I think the terminology in these matters is highly unstable and leads to these confusions.
Note that in the two charts I posted before, they give “soil” as distinct from vegetation/plants, under the same category.
The IPCC chart lists “Vegetation, Soil and Detritus” http://tinyurl.com/y8s4m6m
The NASA chart lists “Plants and Soil” and calls this pair “Land”
http://tinyurl.com/624cbs
Whereas here they refer to all the above as “soils” (and they switch back and forth between CO2 and C):
“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…”
I also enjoyed that phrase: “Plants are famous for photosynthesis…”
Did they include earthworm belches and toots in the study?
Inquiring minds want to know!
My statistics are a little (ok, a lot) rusty. Could someone verify what they are saying here to justify two “robusts” and a real?
Our analysis is based on climate anomalies and is thus robust to the fact that more high-flux sites have been measured in recent years. But it would be theoretically possible for the jump in measurements between 1989-1998 and 1999-2008, N=348 and 773 respectively, to induce a trend. When the decades are analysed separately, temperate forests (which dominate the data) show a significant trend driven by temperature anomaly (P=0.004) and P=0.10 respectively; the full global data show a weak trend (P=0.09) for 1989-1998, although not for 1999-2008. We thus conclude that the 1989-2008 trend is robust and real.
Ian H (05:50:37) :
I think you are right about clouds and rain (huge surface area in contact with the air).
Ferdinand seems to ignore that the seawater is in fact full of CO2 using micro-organisms and the partial pressure of CO2 is only relevant to the absolute amount dissolved in a given time. The time constants should be the same.
Why should a reduction in human emissions take several years to be noticed? There are seasonal signals in the CO2 atmospheric concentrations as measured. The effect should be immediately apparent.
Ferdinand lost me when he claimed here that we couldn’t derive the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere from the C14 residence time from bomb tests as “there was so little that the plants scarfed it all up”. Or words to that effect. He has a knack of sounding reasonable while making arguments which are full of holes to put it politely.
Mia Nony (12:15:39) :
(…)
COULD WE RUN OUT OF GATES?
Hope not, since then the horsies will run away.
Did the IPCC make any claims about disastrous animal migrations that involved wild horses? When those are disproven, then we can have GaitGate!
So they measure how much extra CO2 is being released due to higher temperatures, but not how much is being stored (presumably someone else is studying this). With higher temperatures, and more CO2, biomass increases and certainly must also be storing more CO2 than in cooler and CO2 deprived times.
Also, what is the significance, 68%? or 95%. While the uncertainty of an individual measurement must certainly dwarf what they are finding (0.1% per year, 2% over 20 years), collectively the trends may be more certain (assuming the + = the -). The uncertainty in the total CO2 being released or stored must be even larger since this can only be estimated, and not measured.
Climate science continues to keep uncertainty locked in a closet, and pretend it does not exist, so they can pretend to a certitude that does not exist.
Ray (21:52:12) :
“After subjecting their comparisons to statistical analysis,…”
I hope it’s not Mannian statistics!
I suspect the statistics is wrong too. We now know that time series require special handling that has not typically been done in climate studies. So, chances are pretty good we can toss this study in the garbage can.
Starbuck (06:37:02) :
Human emissions are ~30 BILLION tons per year and rising
Technically falling at the moment, as some posts above explain.
Quite how this is going to be made to fit with the “hottest year EVAH” that we are sure to have will be interesting to see.
Yes, I know the long-term trend is clearly upward, but one of the features of the extreme warmists fiddling of their data is that they are doing it even when it is contrary to what they seek to prove.
If it is super-hot this year and CO2 output has been down for a couple of years, then the link between the two is weakened, not strengthened.
Mike Borgelt (14:33:45) :
Ian H (05:50:37) :
I think you are right about clouds and rain (huge surface area in contact with the air).
Ferdinand seems to ignore that the seawater is in fact full of CO2 using micro-organisms and the partial pressure of CO2 is only relevant to the absolute amount dissolved in a given time. The time constants should be the same.
Why should a reduction in human emissions take several years to be noticed? There are seasonal signals in the CO2 atmospheric concentrations as measured. The effect should be immediately apparent.
Ferdinand lost me when he claimed here that we couldn’t derive the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere from the C14 residence time from bomb tests as “there was so little that the plants scarfed it all up”. Or words to that effect. He has a knack of sounding reasonable while making arguments which are full of holes to put it politely
To start with CO2 in rain: That is part of the normal cycle of CO2 in the atmosphere and helps to dissolve carbonate rocks on land. The only difference may be that warmer temperatures increase moisture and thus rain, dissolving more CO2 back to earth (which may be released again when drying up). But I haven’t seen any figures until now if that makes a huge change in the balance, neither in atmospheric CO2 levels when it is raining.
There are two important points in the release/uptake of CO2 by the oceans: the local partial pressure difference and the diffusion speed. The first can be quite high: ocean pCO2 hundreds of microatm below or above the atmospheric pCO2, from near the poles to the equator. Temperature makes the main difference, but biolife goes the opposite way. But in average, the pCO2 difference is only 7 microatm, which is the only driving force to push extra CO2 into the oceans. The diffusion speed is the main limiting factor which makes that with the current pCO2 difference only some 3 GtC extra CO2/year is absorbed by the oceans (humans emit 8 GtC/year).
May I urgently ask you to read the papers of Feely e.a. who have looked at the transfer rates of CO2 in/out the oceans:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
The noise in CO2 levels caused by temperature changes (Pinatubo, El Niño) is about +/- 1.5 GtC/yr in the atmosphere (see http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg where 1 ppmv = 2.1 GtC). To see a change in trend, the difference in increase should be at least 1.5 GtC to be visible out of the noise. The current increase in the atmosphere is about 4 GtC/yr caused by 8 GtC emissions. With a 10% reduction in emissions and a steady state sink capacity, the increase sinks to 3.2 GtC/yr. That means that you need at least 2-3 years before a reduction in increase speed is observed.
About the residence time: what you (and many others like Segalstad) are looking at is how long a certain molecule CO2 (whatever the origin or type) resides in the atmosphere, before getting exchanged with oceans or vegetation. That is about 5.2 years average. That is governed by the exchange rates between atmosphere and oceans/vegetation of about 150 GtC/year, or near 20% of what resides in the atmosphere. That doesn’t change the total quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere with one milligram, as long as it is only exchange and the net balance over a full seasonal cycle is zero.
What the IPCC looks for is how long an additional quantity (whatever the origin or type) stays in the atmosphere. That is governed by the sink capacity of the oceans and vegetation to absorb at least a part of the extra CO2 over time. But currently that is only 4 GtC/year, halve of what is emitted, only 0.5% of what is in the atmosphere. If we should stop all emissions today, next year the amount in the atmosphere would sink with 4 GtC, the year after that with 3.xx GtC (as the pressure difference air-oceans is reduced), etc…
The decay rate for extra CO2 in the atmosphere has a half life of about 38 years (see Peter Dietze at http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm ), much longer than the 5.2 years residence time, but much better than the “hundreds of years” of the IPCC…
Ferdinand Engelbeen
The only difference may be that warmer temperatures increase moisture and thus rain, dissolving more CO2 back to earth (which may be released again when drying up>>
While this makes sense on land, does it not rain over the ocean too?
Ferdinand Engelbeen
May I urgently ask you to read the papers of Feely e.a. who have looked at the transfer rates of CO2 in/out the oceans:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml>>
I skimmed the paper. My question relates to ocean circulation. Various ocean currents move large amounts of water from warm to cold and vice versa. The paper seems to treat the oceans as static except for upwelling etc. Would not the ocean currents be constantly moving co2 laden cold water to warm, releasing CO2, and co2 defficient warm water toward the poles, where its capacity to absorb increases as it cools?
Wondering Aloud (21:10:25) :
“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”
Does this statement make any logical sense at all? Is he claiming that somehow carbon dioxide molecules released from soil somehow know better than to absorb radiation? Have they been specially trained to be aware of environmental issues?
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Carbon cycle
Richard M (16:50:32) :
Ray (21:52:12) :
“After subjecting their comparisons to statistical analysis,…”
I hope it’s not Mannian statistics!
I suspect the statistics is wrong too. We now know that time series require special handling that has not typically been done in climate studies. So, chances are pretty good we can toss this study in the garbage can.
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If you get the right answer by faulty method, forget it. Throw that answer in the trash. We want right methods, not right answers.
Mia Nony (12:15:39) :
COWGATE
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100031389/now-its-cowgate-expert-report-says-claims-of-livestock-causing-global-warming-are-false/
Now it’s CowGate: expert report says claims of livestock causing global warming are false
COULD WE RUN OUT OF GATES?
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Not as long as the Telegraph has Gerald Warner spinning. Much better coverage of the this study can be found at
http://www.pigprogress.net/news/eating-less-meat-has-no-effect-on-global-warming-4065.html
pigprogress is a far more accurate source of information than the Telegraph.
As a humane gesture to the elderly on fixed incomes we should get as much coal as we can out of the earth so the price of coal goes down. Then build more coal powered electricity plants. That would translate to lower electric bills. This would alleviate some of the pressure on those with tight budgets.
Plus there would be the benefit to plant life from the extra co2 in the air. Food prices would go down a little. That would be great for those on fixed incomes too!
What a wonderful gesture it would be! 🙂