This could be a game changer. From the University of California, Irvine press release, a finding that suggests soil microbes have a negative feedback with temperature increase. This has broad implications for the amount of CO2 emitted estimated in climate models. It had been assumed that as temperature increased, microbes and fungii would increase their CO2 output. Globally, this microbiotic contribution is large. The amount of CO2 released from soils worldwide each year is estimated to be about 8-10 times greater than the amount released by humans.
This study shows that soil microbes won’t go into a an “overdrive” mode when soil temperature increases.
Soil microbes produce less atmospheric CO2 than expected with climate warming
Key players in the carbon cycle, they multiply slowly when overheated
— Irvine, Calif., April 26, 2010 —
The physiology of microbes living underground could determine the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from soil on a warmer Earth, according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience.
Researchers at UC Irvine, Colorado State University and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies found that as global temperatures increase, microbes in soil become less efficient over time at converting carbon in soil into carbon dioxide, a key contributor to climate warming.
Microbes, in the form of bacteria and fungi, use carbon for energy to breathe, or respire, and to grow in size and in number. A model developed by the researchers shows microbes exhaling carbon dioxide furiously for a short period of time in a warmer environment, leaving less carbon to grow on. As warmer temperatures are maintained, the less efficient use of carbon by the microbes causes them to decrease in number, eventually resulting in less carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.
“Microbes aren’t the destructive agents of global warming that scientists had previously believed,” said Steven Allison, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UCI and lead author on the study. “Microbes function like humans: They take in carbon-based fuel and breathe out carbon dioxide. They are the engines that drive carbon cycling in soil. In a balanced environment, plants store carbon in the soil and microbes use that carbon to grow. The microbes then produce enzymes that convert soil carbon into atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
The study, “Soil-Carbon Response to Warming Dependent on Microbial Physiology,” contradicts the results of older models that assume microbes will continue to spew ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the climate continues to warm. The new simulations suggest that if microbial efficiency declines in a warmer world, carbon dioxide emissions will fall back to pre-warming levels, a pattern seen in field experiments. But if microbes manage to adapt to the warmth – for instance, through increased enzyme activity – emissions could intensify.
“When we developed a model based on the actual biology of soil microbes, we found that soil carbon may not be lost to the atmosphere as the climate warms,” said Matthew Wallenstein of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. “Conventional ecosystem models that didn’t include enzymes did not make the same predictions.”
Mark Bradford, assistant professor of terrestrial ecosystem ecology at Yale, said there is intense debate in the scientific community over whether the loss of soil carbon will contribute to global warming. “The challenge we have in predicting this is that the microbial processes causing this loss are poorly understood,” he said. “More research in this area will help reduce uncertainties in climate prediction.”
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David44 says:
April 28, 2010 at 11:33 am
“In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapor in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date for how water vapor responds to a warming climate.
I have read the water vapor “feedback” in detail for North/West Europe by Philipona. This paper showed a huge feedback of water vapor and temperature with a very small increase of CO2 over a few years. That was a factor 4 larger than what the models expected (as global feedback). But what Philipona forgot was that in this case, the NAO was the main driver for (winter) temperatures and humidity: a positive NAO shows stronger SW winds in winter, bringing warmer, more humid air to far inland. Thus water vapor in this case was not a feedback, but (together with warmer ocean side winds) the driver for increased temperatures…
Ferdinand,
The MLO and AIRS curves match well, because the AIRS data were “collocated within 500 km” of MLO.
And the AIRS data do not show well mixed CO2…
This AIRS image clearly shows Arctic CO2 in the 370’s, Antarctic CO2 in the 360’s and mid- to lower latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere to be in the 380’s.
The polar regions clearly have 10 to 20 ppmv lower CO2 concentrations than the mid- to low latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. This is one of the reasons that CO2 estimates from Antarctic ice cores are too low.
Davol says:
April 28, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I’ve got a game changer for the global warming agenda. The volcano in Iceland is still spewing ash into the upper atmospher. It’s a well established climate model that can demonstrate the effect of this volcano for the next 2 to 5 years at least. That scientifically established effect is known as global cooling. It’s true what is said above, that nature doesn’t give a crap about climate models. Now there’s a game changer.
Not really, the ash is not going high enough. Most still is in the troposphere where it can rain out in a few days to a few weeks. The Pinatubo was the real one, spitting it directly into the stratosphere, where it stayed for 2-3 years…
gcb says:
April 28, 2010 at 11:01 am
Actually, more CO2 in the ocean makes it (slightly) more acidic via the formation of small amounts of carbonic acid, as I understand it. This could potentially have adverse impacts on coral reefs.
And it might not. It seems, for instance, that some crustaceans grow bigger, with thicker shells (CaCO3).
Coral bleaching seems to be a transient situation too, while the symbiotic algae that were there die, and until they are replaced by a more adapted strain/species/whatever.
Sea water around corals also seems to be much more acidic than in the open sea.
It also appears that the extent of pH variation from GW will not be more than 0,2 to 0,4 pH units, and it seems that wider variations occur already.
I apologize for not having links ready — it would take me some time! Try looking up, say, http://co2science.org in the meantime. It has a search feature. All these assertions would be much more comfortable for me if I was more certain of them, in terms of references!
As has been said here (this post’s comments are full of phylosophical observations!), the extent of our ignorance is abysmal. But the first step to knoweledge is knowing we know not.
Yes, Ferdinand, almost all of the rise in CO2 comes from natural [non-anthropogenic] sources. The current rise in CO2 is a correlation that appears to be largely a coincidence. Similar rises have taken place repeatedly in the past, before humans could possibly have had any effect. As you have stated before, a rise in CO2 results from a rise in temperature. This cause and effect appears on all time scales.
You do not agree with the article. But it is very similar to what Prof Freeman Dyson explained here. The biosphere has an enormous effect on sources and sinks of CO2, and we do not know all the answers. We have not specifically quantified the extent of the effect of the biosphere on CO2. Its terrestrial extent in particular is one of the great unknowns. Climate science is in its infancy.
One thing we do know is that while CO2 has steadily increased over the past two centuries, the planet’s temperature rises and falls on a multi-decadal time scale without regard to CO2, making a clear link between CO2 and any subsequent rise in temperature highly questionable.
All you can say is that the amount of a particular carbon isotope remains in the atmosphere longer due to biological processes. Gradually over time the ratio shifts. But increases in CO2 follow temperature increases, and no adequate refutation has been provided showing that the current rise in CO2 is not primarily the result of the MWP. As Prof Dyson explains, the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the mid 1700’s can not be explained by human emissions, which are insufficient to cause such a large rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Therefore, other factors must be at work.
It is premature to make the assumption that the relatively tiny amount of anthropogenic CO2 has any measurable effect on the temperature. Rather, it seems that the temperature has an effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
Do scientists ever publish papers based on experiments anymore. These numbers can only be gross estimates with large uncertainties. How do scientists publish papers and not estimate these uncertainties. Maybe the paper does, but the press release should have it as well.
Models are today what thought experiments were in Einsteins days, so I don’t have a problem with models in that sense. However, Einsteins thought experiments came after reading papers published based on experimental data from a lab. I keep waiting for a day when I read about a paper based on experiments from a funded project that simulates climate in a closed system built like in Stephen Kings fictional work Dome. I doubt it will happen, since models are way too convenient. Who needs to know whats real when we can create our own reality of the “The emperor is wearing fine clothes when he is naked” variety with models.
David44 says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/28/new-ground-truth-microbiotic-negative-feedback/#comment-379030
If anyone has a more developed response to Dressler’s statement, please chime in. Mean time, I’ll see what I can find at scienceofdoom as magicjava suggests. Thanks.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for but my own views on the positive- negative feedback from H2O question have been most affected by a study done in Canada over a decade ago. They used spectral analysis of downwelling longwave radiation, the main driver of the greenhouse effect, to quantify the contribution of the various atmospheric component gases to the total DLR signal. What they found was that in the presence of DLR from H2O that was greater than 200W/m2, the contribution from the nonH2O GHGs was dramatically suppressed. CO2 went from providing 30-35W/m2 of the 120 -140 W/m2 total in the dry cold air of winter to only 10.5W/m2 of the 270W/m2 in the moister air of summer. Interestingly, they used a computer model to construct a profile of the preindustrial atmosphere which exactly predicted this phenomenon.
Since any predicted increase in water in the atmosphere would need to be generated from the oceans in the tropics and subtropics and since measurements and predictions of the total DLR in those zones are in the 375-450+ W/m2 range, this phenomenon suggests, to me at least, that CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect in those areas would be in total only 1-3% or less of the whole and any marginal increases would be reduced proportionately. Given that, it’s a little hard to imagine how CO2 could generate enough extra water in the atmosphere to drive any kind of feedback.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When using models to deceive
@magicjava, Ferdinand, and Dave Wendt – Thanks for your comments. Science of Doom has a current post relative to this. The bottom line for me is it’s highly complex and anyone who claims to understand the effects of water vapor (Dressler?) sufficient to make accurate predictions for the end of the century is spoofin’ or deluded or both. Given the long term relative stability of climate, it seems likely that feedbacks are much more likely to be proved to be negative than positive and that external influences must be responsible for any dramatic shifts. It’s hard for me to believe that we can put and keep enough CO2 in the atmosphere before we run out of fossil fuels to have seriously deleterious effects on climate. (That’s not to say that mining, transporting, and burning coal and oil is good for the environment and other living things; just that CO2 production seems the least likely of the impacts to be harmful.)
The diagram clearly shows what the problem is.
The atmosphere increases 4 units a year while fossil fuel use puts out 7 units a year.
Therefore humans are completely responsible as 7 is greater than 4. And we need to cut 3/7 of our output immediately to avoid catastrophe, and even more to just slow down the
warmingclimate change. A 7/7 reduction would work best of all.Check with Dr. Pachauri, he’ll confirm this. He’s smart. He got a Nobel Prize for figuring all this stuff out.
pft, you mentioned thought experiments. Einstein was good at that. In his clerk days, he spent many hours battling office boredom by doing thought experiments. Brilliant man.
I believe the proper phrase is less alkaline, not slightly acidic. You would be hard pressed to turn a salty ocean into an acidic one.
listen to that….. it’s the sound of evaporating “tipping points”.
I installed large tonnage commercial chillers at a mushroom farm, (mushroom metabolism produces a huge amount of heat) and I was told mushrooms essentially stop growing when the temperature reaches 90°F, so it isn’t just microbes which stop contibuting CO2 as it warms. Termites don’t handle heat well either.
Maybe you guys would enjoy my little essay on Little Carbon Dioxide Suns…
Little Carbon Dioxide Suns
I managed to place an unwanted d at the end of my name in the post above. My last name is Colenaty, not Colenatyd. Not that this makes any difference to anyone except me.
[Can’t change it, sorry. You will have to go through WordPress. ~dbs, mod]
Once you start modeling the complexity of life itself, you’re lucky if you can get to within a factor of 2. Often much worse performance is considered “excellent”. The need for more research is an understatement, but claims that biological modeling is precise can be dismissed with a hearty laugh.
Mike says:
April 28, 2010 at 9:33 am
From the press release: “But if microbes manage to adapt to the warmth – for instance, through increased enzyme activity – emissions could intensify.”
So, we should continue to run up CO2 levels and see what happens. If we ruin this planet we can always move to another one, right?
REPLY: The whole AGW issue is built on “what if?”. You could come up with a hundred more “what if” scenarios. What if microbes develop super powers? What if they develop an affinity for increased CO2? What if nothing happens at all? The planet and the microbes did just fine before when CO2 levels were higher in ancient past. I’m not going to worry about them and neither should anyone else as we have virtually no control over the sum of the biospheric microbiotics. -A
REPLY to A: No, AGW is based on physics. If we pump CO2 into the atmosphere this will push toward warming. There are unknowns. This soil microbe one is interesting. There are unknowns in cloud formation and in deep ocean heat transport. But these may delay warming but are not likely to stop it. And of course there are unknown risks: methane release from permafrost. The people with the relevant expertise are overwhelmingly convinced the risk of major harm to our environment is high with most of the uncertainty in when not if. Therefore it is prudent for us to explore means to reduce CO2 emissions.
PS: I think it is good you are posting links to Gore and the EPA even though you are making fun of them. Avoiding group think is important all around.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
April 28, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Not really, the ash is not going high enough. Most still is in the troposphere where it can rain out in a few days to a few weeks. The Pinatubo was the real one, spitting it directly into the stratosphere, where it stayed for 2-3 years…
And the biologist would suggest otherwise ( in a local geographic area)
Eg Langmann et al
Volcanic ash as fertiliser for the surface ocean
Abstract
Iron is a key limiting micro-nutrient for marine primary productivity. It can be supplied to the ocean by atmospheric dust deposition. Volcanic ash deposition into the ocean represents another external and so far largely neglected source of iron. This study 5 demonstrates strong evidence for natural fertilisation in the iron-limited oceanic area of the NE Pacific, induced by volcanic ash from the eruption of Kasatochi volcano in August 2008. Atmospheric and oceanic conditions were favourable to generate a massive phytoplankton bloom in the NE Pacific Ocean which for the first time establishes a causal connection between oceanic iron-fertilisation and volcanic ash supply.
This brings three concomitant mechanisms into play,surface albedo,cloud nucleation due to dmsp, and co2 drawdown (from a biological POV),
The draw down is visible in the airborne fraction ,eg Gloor et al 2010
Although understood for a longtime eg Harvey 1937, Kurenkov 1966 the mechanisms seem to have been overlooked by the IPCC
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/AFPETURBATION.jpg
Mike says:
April 28, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Mike says:
April 28, 2010 at 9:33 am
[…] So, we should continue to run up CO2 levels and see what happens. If we ruin this planet we can always move to another one, right?
REPLY: The whole AGW issue is built on “what if?”. […]
REPLY to A: No, AGW is based on physics. If we pump CO2 into the atmosphere this will push toward warming. […]
Right it is. But in an incomplete understanding of the factors involved. Moreover, much that we love physics, it still is unable describe many things.
So, as said here, there’s still much ignorance in this matter, and a little knowledge. Filling in our ignorance with assumptions takes us nowhere, and anyway, in the absence of experimental (not models!) knowledge, any assumption is just as good as its complete opposite.
Even how much temperature increase results from a given increase in CO2, in the earth system, is still an assumption, IIRC.
Stacey: “Why not carry out an experiment and measure CO2 emissions from soils at different temperatures. Is that too easy?”
I was wondering the same thing.
How about 100 different samples of soil with a variety of temperatures and CO2 levels. Monitor the changes in CO2 levels over a few months.
David Middleton says:
April 28, 2010 at 2:35 pm
the AIRS data do not show well mixed CO2…
“AIRS data show that carbon dioxide is not well mixed in Earth’s atmosphere, results that have been validated by direct measurements. The belt of carbon dioxide concentration in the southern hemisphere, depicted in red, reaches maximum strength in July-August and minimum strength in December-January. There is a net transfer of carbon dioxide from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere produces three to four times more human produced carbon dioxide than the southern hemisphere. Image credit: NASA”
There lacks one word:
“AIRS data show that carbon dioxide is not well mixed momentarely in Earth’s atmosphere”. If you see the difference in summer and winter for the NH, the Arctic CO2 is higher than average in winter and lower than average in summer (which is caused by vegetation growth and decay). Just have a look at the AIRS animation:
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/story_archive/AIRS-CO2-Movie-2002-2009/
This AIRS image clearly shows Arctic CO2 in the 370′s, Antarctic CO2 in the 360′s and mid- to lower latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere to be in the 380′s.
The polar regions clearly have 10 to 20 ppmv lower CO2 concentrations than the mid- to low latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. This is one of the reasons that CO2 estimates from Antarctic ice cores are too low.
Yes, in summer time, but the opposite within the NH for winter times. Indeed there is a gradient between the NH and SH, as most of the human emissions are in the NH and the ITCZ slows down the interchange of air masses (including CO2) between the hemispheres. But over a year, the averages are less than 2 ppmv from each other within one hemisphere and less than 5 ppmv between near the North Pole (Barrow) and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.gif
The difference is 5% of the increase or slightly over 1% of the full scale. Thus well mixed, the SH follows the NH with some 12 months lag. As in pre-industrial times the changes were (probably) much slower (in average) and ice cores average the changes out over eight to hundreds of years, the NH/SH differences play no role at all.
Smokey says:
April 28, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Yes, Ferdinand, almost all of the rise in CO2 comes from natural [non-anthropogenic] sources. The current rise in CO2 is a correlation that appears to be largely a coincidence. Similar rises have taken place repeatedly in the past, before humans could possibly have had any effect. As you have stated before, a rise in CO2 results from a rise in temperature. This cause and effect appears on all time scales.
While nature increases CO2 levels with higher temperatures, the increase is limited to 8 ppmv/C, even sustained over thousands of years. That means that the drop in temperature between the MWP and the LIA was about 6 ppmv (measured) and the increase in temperature (less than 1 C) since the LIA didn’t increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere with more than 8 ppmv. That is all. The rest of the 100+ ppmv increase is from human emissions.
To make a balance: humans have emitted over 300 GtC since about 1850, of which about 210 GtC remained in the atmosphere ( as mass, not as individual isotopic different molecules). Thus it is entirely possible that humans are responsible for the increase. Both oceans and biosphere are net sinks for CO2 and there are no other important natural sources which are fast enough to deliver the increase.
Moreover: if we add 8 GtC/year and we measure an increase of some 4 GtC/year in the atmosphere, that simply means that some 4 GtC/year is absorbed by nature as a whole, whatever the individual natural flows released and absorbed… This is sufficient proof that humans are responsible. That is a matter of mass balance:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
At least over the past 60 years, nature as a whole added nothing, nada, zero CO2 in balance to the atmosphere, despite that 150 GtC was exchanged between the atmosphere and oceans/biosphere.
It is like an industry with a huge turnover, but a negative yield…
maksimovich says:
April 28, 2010 at 11:22 pm
And the biologist would suggest otherwise ( in a local geographic area)
Eg Langmann et al
Volcanic ash as fertiliser for the surface ocean
In addition, CO2 increase was reduced after the Pinatubo eruption in part from colder temperatures (-0.6 C), but also by increased photosynthesis: the aerosols redistributed sunlight in more diffuse ways, which enhanced sunrays impact on leaves which were more shaded from direct sunlight…
Mike says:
April 28, 2010 at 8:21 pm
REPLY to A: No, AGW is based on physics. If we pump CO2 into the atmosphere this will push toward warming. There are unknowns. This soil microbe one is interesting. There are unknowns in cloud formation and in deep ocean heat transport. But these may delay warming but are not likely to stop it. And of course there are unknown risks: methane release from permafrost. The people with the relevant expertise are overwhelmingly convinced the risk of major harm to our environment is high with most of the uncertainty in when not if. Therefore it is prudent for us to explore means to reduce CO2 emissions.
PS: I think it is good you are posting links to Gore and the EPA even though you are making fun of them. Avoiding group think is important all around.
The temperatures were higher than today in the previous interglacial (the Eemian), without any runaway reaction of CO2 of CH4 levels. Permafrost and Arctic summer ice were probably gone, as good as a large part of the Greenland ice sheet. Temperatures in Alaska were 5 C warmer than today, but CO2 levels were only 280 ppmv and CH4 levels were only 700 ppbv. The effect of 2xCO2 is not more than 0.9 C, with (questionable) water vapor feedback 1.3 C. The rest of the feedbacks are highly uncertain and even the sign used in the models may be wrong (clouds e.g.).
But that shouldn’t stop us for a search into alternatives, but that is quite different from high taxes or cap-and-trade and other economic disasters…
BTW, my experience is that websites which don’t give links to their opposants are not thrustworthy, no matter how “scientific” these may seem to be…