In all of California, there is no greater shrine to nature than the giant redwoods of the Northern California. WUWT readers may remember this article which talks about the threat to giant redwoods, due to a supposed global warming induced lack of coastal fog, which these trees need as part of their life cycle:
One more thing to worry about – fog shortage
From the University of California – Berkeley via Eurekalert:
Fog has declined in past century along California’s redwood coast
Analysis of hourly airport cloud cover reports leads to surprising finding
California’s coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
Of course, like some “climate denial” video our friend Peter Sinclair might edit, the fog research conclusion was soon shown to be a “crock” in itself:
Last summer the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story about research on fog and climate with a different conclusion:
The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier. That’s the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.
Well, now the same scientist that published the fog decline story has spawned another story in the San Francisco Chronicle that flies in the face of his earlier study.
Here are some excerpts from the story:
The $2.5 million Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative has allowed Sillett and other specialists from Humboldt State and UC Berkeley to set up shop in some of California’s last remaining old-growth redwood groves. The researchers are climbing, poking, prodding, measuring and testing everything, including molecules of coast redwood and giant sequoia trees on 16 research plots throughout the ancient trees’ geographic range.
The plan is to chart the health of the trees over time and use laboratory analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes to figure out how the trees have reacted in the past to climate and weather conditions.
“Embedded in this tree ring is a remarkable record of climate,” said Todd Dawson, the director of the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry at UC Berkeley, as he held up a core sample from a Montgomery Woods redwood. “Based on what has happened in the past, we can really project what will happen in the future.”
This was interesting:
Laboratory testing of tree-ring data is now so advanced that scientists can determine things like whether tree growth in a certain year was the result of fog or precipitation. Scientists intend to plot biological changes in redwood tree rings dating back 1,000 to 2,000 years, with particular emphasis on effects that might have been caused by the industrial revolution.
I assume then, that they have fog and and precipitation measurement records spanning 1000-2000 years that allow them to verify this?
Here’s where the older fog research and the newer tree ring studies collide with our current climate, bold emphasis mine:
Redwood studies thus far have come up with some confounding results. Redwood trees are known to thrive on summer fog, and it was believed that they grew more slowly as they aged, but studies by Sillett and others show redwood growth increasing, in some cases doubling, over the past century. That’s despite a 33 percent decrease in the amount of fog along the Northern California coast since the early 20th century, according to a study by Dawson.
Anthony Ambrose, a postdoctoral research fellow at the UC Berkeley department of integrative biology, said the growth spurt could be the result of more sunlight and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which generally increases plant growth.
“Maybe it is because there is a CO{-2} increase while there is still enough moisture,” Ambrose said.
This incovenient finding doesn’t bode well for the people (Peter Sinclair, Joe Romm) pushing: The “CO2 is Plant Food” Crock.
But just in case you think this is just another argument among friends over a few tree rings, I’ll remind readers of this story:
Surprise: Earths’ Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause
The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth’s vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.
Yeah, damned inconvenient these findings.
Now that California voters have reaffirmed their commitment to CARB’s favorite AB32 law reducing CO2 emissions, I’m waiting for the inevitable lawsuit from the Sierra Club which will argue that reducing CO2 will hurt the giant redwoods. It is after all, what the Sierra Club does.
h/t to Steve Mosher
Ken Roberts says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:50 am
How do you get a tree ring without murdering the tree?
Ummm, okay, I know: Mind melding. Right?
:o)
Jimash says:
November 27, 2010 at 1:23 pm
“How do you get a tree ring without murdering the tree?”
They use something like a thin reaming tool that extracts a sideways core .
How the tree feels about that I couldn’t tell you.
Oh, you mean something like they use on guys with prostate problems?
You know: They shove as round wire brush up his urethra and spin that hummer until he either hits high ‘C’ with his screaming, or he passes out from the pain?
Got it!
Future news article,
Scientist have find connection between AGW and the rising CO2 level from the our use of fossil fuels contributing to obesity in California’s giant redwoods. The coalition for redwoods, arborists and psychologists(CRAP) have demanded funding be set aside by the governments to address the effects of low tree esteem and over eating brought on by AGW.
A chief spokesman of CRAP has said “Not addressing these issues now can only lead to higher incidences of Logibetes, timberitist and in some extreme cases lumbercide amongst these depressed trees”.
Redwoods are impressive – I say that after spending 6 months of 2000 in the Santa Cruz UCSC campus.
There are many weak links in all these explanations and interpretations. The fog decrease may or may not be related to the “warming” which may or may not be partly (but measurably) related to CO2, and the fog may or may not be important for the growth of the trees, while there are lots of other obvious quantities – such as the CO2 concentration, but also other things – that could be more important.
Clearly, the people who study these things are people “in search of a problem”. It seems totally self-evident that there’s no problem with the redwoods, so why would one search for the causes of these problems? Clearly, the conclusions – and any conclusions – about the “culprits” will be bogus because if there’s no problem, there can’t be any culprits.
I thought that warming would increase fog due to temperature difference over night. Advection, and radiation fogs would be more prolific. Summer mornings in the UK get some good radiation fogs and winters some good advection fogs. Still, what do I know. But trees responding to increased CO2? Who would have thought that?
crosspatch says:
“The forests are in better shape on both coasts and the upper Midwest than they were at the turn of the century when they were almost completely razed for lumber.”
Crosspatch is right as usual. New England’s trees were almost completely eliminated by settlers clearing the land for crops. But as the prairies opened to agriculture, and along with the Arbor Day movement, New England began regaining its tree cover. Americans love to plant trees.
Today there are more trees than there were in 1492, and the U.S. is a net carbon sink. The rest of the world should pay the U.S. carbon credits – if the whole “carbon” scam was based on honesty. [Sorry, I’m being silly. Americans are being told that they are evil, and must pay reparations to the rest of the world through the UN – which, as always, will take its hefty cut of the loot.]
Smokey says:
November 28, 2010 at 5:12 am
Funny [boys and girls] that you are Crosspatch and Smokey.
Why nett and not gross?
Are we talking nature here or economics? Or political sciences?
the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.
It certainly didn’t soar in California this year, from LA to Eureks, and summer for the State in general was down 5 to 10 degrees with ‘winter type’ lows moving through… which was late to the dance and left early.
We just broke the record for Nov. 27th snowfall here, set in 1970.
You have yet to fully understand AGW scare tactics. Predict and forecast EVERYTHING in order to avoid AGW being falsified. This is the game they are playing. Remember less cold and snow in the northern latitudes followed by more cold and snow in the northern latitudes when it became clear that snowfalls were wer no longer just a thing of the past. :o)
crosspatch says:
November 27, 2010 at 9:25 pm
“BTW some nay-sayers to CO2 affecting photosynthesis point to lab experiments showing failure of plants to exploit increasing CO2″
It greatly depends on the sort of plant. Conifers, for example, seem to do very well with increased CO2 while hardwoods don’t show as much difference.
That makes sense – according to this paper (Beerling and Berner 2005) broad leaved trees evolved to maximise efficiency of utilization of falling CO2 levels:
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/5/1302.full
So they adapted to recent lower CO2 and thus gained at the expense of the conifers – so now with increasing CO2 the reverse is starting to happen.
It does trees good to get pithed once in a while! Then stagger home, singing loudly — “Wooden it be wonderful”.
Smokey;
When it’s finally admitted that CO2 is beneficial, the US will be asked to pay reparations for its forests’ theft of Atmospheric Resources.
The redwoods have thrived for thousands of years, without regard to the climate (weather), until the advent of decks and deck furniture. Any growth problems they have are caused by man directly. Claims that man directly influences the climate are, in my opinion, a waste of good air.
Once again, certainty turns into uncertainty.
Dire prediction of catastrophe based on assumed knowledge of how things work, when in fact, the knowledge just isn’t there.
Good point.
Luboš Motl says:
November 28, 2010 at 12:56 am
Clearly, the people who study these things are people “in search of a problem”.
They also have to justify peppering Giant Redwoods with innumerable holes.
Someone should ask them if they have any intentions of putting the cores back from where they got them.
Insects & mold could be making homes in those stately trees, leading to thier eventual demise, not to mention the weakening of the heartwood at the base.
Save the Trees from the Warmist Borers.
Scientists (other than climate scientists) are actually doing work to see how plants respond to increased CO2 – something that was difficult in a lab.
For example, this study – Long-Term Growth of Ginkgo with CO2 Enrichment Increases Leaf Ice Nucleation Temperatures and Limits Recovery of the Photosynthetic System from Freezing – (http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/content/full/124/1/183) actually studied how increased CO2 made some trees more resistant to freezing temps.
“Abstract: The importance of subzero temperature interactions with elevated CO2 on plant carbon metabolism has received rather little attention, despite their likely role in influencing future vegetation productivity and dynamics. Here we focused on the critical issues of CO2-enrichment effects on leaf-freezing temperatures, subsequent membrane damage, and recovery of the photosynthetic system. We show that growth in elevated CO2 (70 Pa) results in a substantial and significant (P < 0.01) increase (up to 4°C) in the ice nucleation temperature of leaves of Maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba), which was observed consistently throughout the 1999 growing season relative to their ambient CO2 (35 Pa) counterparts. We suggest that increased sensitivity of leaves to ice damage after growth in elevated CO2 provides an explanation for increased photoinhibition observed in the field early and late in the growing season when low nighttime temperatures are experienced. This new mechanism is proposed in addition to the earlier postulated explanation for this phenomenon involving a reduction in the rate of triose-P utilization owing to a decrease in the rate of carbohydrate export from the leaf…”
Imagine the advancements if citrus growers were able to see increased resistance to freezing in their trees with increased CO2. Would they see this as a harm or as a good?
Since there are very few redwoods left in the world, it is of little consequence whether increased CO2 is increasing or decreasing their growth. They are a particular species which has evolved to fill a particular niche.
The post did refer to some satellite data indicating that the plant productivity has been increasing due to increased CO2.
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California’s giant redwoods inconveniently respond to increased carbon dioxide
Posted on November 27, 2010 by Anthony Watts
In all of California, there is no greater shrine to nature than the giant redwoods of the Northern California. WUWT readers may remember this article which talks about the threat to giant redwoods, due to a supposed global warming induced lack of coastal fog, which these trees need as part of their life cycle:
One more thing to worry about – fog shortage
From the University of California – Berkeley via Eurekalert:
Fog has declined in past century along California’s redwood coast
Analysis of hourly airport cloud cover reports leads to surprising finding
California’s coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
Of course, like some “climate denial” video our friend Peter Sinclair might edit, the fog research conclusion was soon shown to be a “crock” in itself:
Last summer the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story about research on fog and climate with a different conclusion:
The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier. That’s the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.
Well, now the same scientist that published the fog decline story has spawned another story in the San Francisco Chronicle that flies in the face of his earlier study.
Click image for the news story
Here are some excerpts from the story:
The $2.5 million Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative has allowed Sillett and other specialists from Humboldt State and UC Berkeley to set up shop in some of California’s last remaining old-growth redwood groves. The researchers are climbing, poking, prodding, measuring and testing everything, including molecules of coast redwood and giant sequoia trees on 16 research plots throughout the ancient trees’ geographic range.
The plan is to chart the health of the trees over time and use laboratory analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes to figure out how the trees have reacted in the past to climate and weather conditions.
“Embedded in this tree ring is a remarkable record of climate,” said Todd Dawson, the director of the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry at UC Berkeley, as he held up a core sample from a Montgomery Woods redwood. “Based on what has happened in the past, we can really project what will happen in the future.”
This was interesting:
Laboratory testing of tree-ring data is now so advanced that scientists can determine things like whether tree growth in a certain year was the result of fog or precipitation. Scientists intend to plot biological changes in redwood tree rings dating back 1,000 to 2,000 years, with particular emphasis on effects that might have been caused by the industrial revolution.
I assume then, that they have fog and and precipitation measurement records spanning 1000-2000 years that allow them to verify this?
Here’s where the older fog research and the newer tree ring studies collide with our current climate, bold emphasis mine:
Redwood studies thus far have come up with some confounding results. Redwood trees are known to thrive on summer fog, and it was believed that they grew more slowly as they aged, but studies by Sillett and others show redwood growth increasing, in some cases doubling, over the past century. That’s despite a 33 percent decrease in the amount of fog along the Northern California coast since the early 20th century, according to a study by Dawson.
Anthony Ambrose, a postdoctoral research fellow at the UC Berkeley department of integrative biology, said the growth spurt could be the result of more sunlight and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which generally increases plant growth.
“Maybe it is because there is a CO{-2} increase while there is still enough moisture,” Ambrose said.
This incovenient finding doesn’t bode well for the people (Peter Sinclair, Joe Romm) pushing: The “CO2 is Plant Food” Crock.
But just in case you think this is just another argument among friends over a few tree rings, I’ll remind readers of this story:
Surprise: Earths’ Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause
The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA satellite data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth’s vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.
Yeah, damned inconvenient these findings.
Since then there has been more recent data which finds that in the past decade, drought has drastically decreased the plant productivity of the earth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100820101504.htm
Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth
ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2010) — Global plant productivity that once was on the rise with warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline because of regional drought, according to a new study of NASA satellite data.
Plant productivity is a measure of the rate of the photosynthesis process that green plants use to convert solar energy, carbon dioxide and water to sugar, oxygen and eventually plant tissue. Compared with a 6 percent increase in plant productivity during the 1980s and 1990s, the decline observed over the last decade is only 1 percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels and the global carbon cycle.
Researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running of the University of Montana in Missoula discovered the global shift from an analysis of NASA satellite data. The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite, combined with other growing season climate data, including temperature, solar radiation and water.
….
“This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth,” Running said.
Zhao and Running’s analysis showed that since 2000, high-latitude Northern Hemisphere ecosystems have continued to benefit from warmer temperatures and a longer growing season. But that effect was offset by warming-associated drought that limited growth in the Southern Hemisphere, resulting in a net global loss of land productivity.
“This past decade’s net decline in terrestrial productivity illustrates that a complex interplay between temperature, rainfall, cloudiness, and carbon dioxide, probably in combination with other factors such as nutrients and land management, will determine future patterns and trends in productivity,” said Diane Wickland, program manager of the Terrestrial Ecology research program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Certainly flooding and drought if it becomes more severe and frequent as a result of global warming will have a negative impact on plant growth and food production. It is foolish to believe otherwise. That was the point of “CO2 is Plant Food” crock video.
REPLY:Mr. Adler, you really should get your own blog, because comments like this are so long that they really clutter the thread. By having your own blog, you can then endlessly cite alarming counter stories to your heart’s content, and then simply provide a link. – Anthony
henrythethird;
Much as I would rather you were right, you actually got that ginko/CO2/freezing story back asswards. That the damaging temperature rose means that the leaves were harmed at higher temperatures, showing reduced resistance to ice damage, under raised CO2 conditions.
Sorry!!
A very pithy blog (no spitting please)
OK, somebody has got to make a joke about this researcher being in a fog, ……….
Another NatGeo quote from “Redwood Forests of the Pacific Coast” May 1899 p.151:
“Nowhere is there any young growth. The youngest trees, which are found only in the northern portion of the belt, are several hundred years of age.
When the timber has been cut there is no sign of reproduction from seed. In many localities sprouts are growing from stumps in the cut areas, but even this form of reproduction is limited. Indeed everything appears to indicate that for some reason, probably a progressive drying of the climate, the present environment is not favorable to the growth of redwood, and with the clearing away of the present forests the end of the species as a source of lumber will be at hand.”
111 years ago it was recognized that the redwood was a living fossil of a formerly widespread tree.
The global warming folks have produced study after study proving the negative effects of global warming. Its inconvenient that now one study after another have come under a storm of much-earned criticism over shoddy, and even purposeful negligence to science. Today, if you attempt to produce just about any type study that demonstrates how global warming is harming the planet, its merit and credibility is DOA, until proven otherwise. So far, nothing has yet risen from the grave.
*******
Ric Werme says:
November 27, 2010 at 11:34 am
On think in the thesis I hadn’t realized is that redwood leaves change greatly between low level and high level leaves. On the east coast, red oaks are one of my favorite examples, and is largely driven by sunlight and probably transpiration.
*******
Black oak (Q. velutina) is maybe the best ex. — the lowest, shadiest leaves can be a foot across & the normal indentations filled in to form a giant oval. Leaves higher up in full sun are much smaller & have the indentations scalloped out to the point where the leaf has little surface area. Look here:
http://www.dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=39
Rick W., 11-17 11:34;
A very unusual and almost appropriate typo/malaprop, Rick:
“On think in the thesis I hadn’t realized”