That’s the good news. The bad news is that they think it will take 30,000-40,000 years, even though they “don’t know exactly where this carbon went” (their own words from the press release) in their model. Isn’t it great when you can announce results like that and not have to worry about tracking where the main component went?
And I thought Susan Solomon’s 1000 year CO2 regime was way out there.
Purdue-led team studies Earth’s recovery from prehistoric global warming
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team.
When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, the Earth increased its ability to pull carbon from the air. This led to a recovery that was quicker than anticipated by many models of the carbon cycle – though still on the order of tens of thousands of years, said Gabriel Bowen, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study.
“We found that more than half of the added carbon dioxide was pulled from the atmosphere within 30,000 to 40,000 years, which is one-third of the time span previously thought,” said Bowen, who also is a member of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. “We still don’t know exactly where this carbon went, but the evidence suggests it was a much more dynamic response than traditional models represent.”
Bowen worked with James Zachos, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to study the end of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, an approximately 170,000-year-long period of global warming that has many features in common with the world’s current situation, he said.
“During this prehistoric event billions of tons of carbon was released into the ocean, atmosphere and biosphere, causing warming of about 5 degrees Celsius,” Bowen said. “This is a good analog for the carbon being released from fossil fuels today.”
Scientists have known of this prehistoric event for 20 years, but how the system recovered and returned to normal atmospheric levels has remained a mystery.
Bowen and Zachos examined samples of marine and terrestrial sediments deposited throughout the event. The team measured the levels of two different types of carbon atoms, the isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-13. The ratio of these isotopes changes as carbon dioxide is drawn from or added to the atmosphere during the growth or decay of organic matter.
Plants prefer carbon-12 during photosynthesis, and when they accelerate their uptake of carbon dioxide it shifts the carbon isotope ratio in the atmosphere. This shift is then reflected in the carbon isotopes present in rock minerals formed by reactions involving atmospheric carbon dioxide, Bowen said.
“The rate of the carbon isotope change in rock minerals tells us how rapidly the carbon dioxide was pulled from the atmosphere,” he said. “We can see the fluxes of carbon dioxide in to and out of the atmosphere. At the beginning of the event we see a shift indicating that a lot of organic-derived carbon dioxide had been added to the atmosphere, and at the end of the event we see a shift indicating that a lot of carbon dioxide was taken up as organic carbon and thus removed from the atmosphere.”
A paper detailing the team’s National Science Foundation-funded work was published in Nature Geoscience.
It had been thought that a slow and fairly constant recovery began soon after excess carbon entered the atmosphere and that the weathering of rocks, called silicate weathering, dictated the timing of the response.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide that reacts with silicon-based minerals in rocks is pulled from the air and captured in the end product of the reaction. This mechanism has a fairly direct correlation with the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and occurs relatively slowly, Bowen said.
The changes Bowen and Zachos found during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum went beyond the effects expected from silicate weathering, he said.
“It seems there was actually a long period of higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide followed by a short and rapid recovery to normal levels,” he said. “During the recovery, the rate at which carbon was pulled from the atmosphere was an order of magnitude greater than the slow drawdown of carbon expected from silicate weathering alone.”
A rapid growth of the biosphere, with a spread of forests, plants and carbon-rich soils to take in the excess carbon dioxide, could explain the quick recovery, Bowen said.
“Expansion of the biosphere is one plausible mechanism for the rapid recovery, but in order to take up this much carbon in forests and soils there must have first been a massive depletion of these carbon stocks,” he said. “We don’t currently know where all the carbon that caused this event came from, and our results suggest the troubling possibility that widespread decay or burning of large parts of the continental biosphere may have been involved.”
Release from a different source, such as volcanoes or sea floor sediments, may have started the event, he said.
“The release of carbon from the biosphere may have occurred as a positive feedback to the warming,” Bowen said. “The forests may have dried out, which can lead to die off and forest fires. If we take the Earth’s future climate to a place where that feedback starts to happen we could see accelerated rates of climate change.”
The team continues to work on new models of the carbon cycle and is also investigating changes in the water cycle during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
“We need to figure out where the carbon went all those years ago to know where it could go in the future,” he said. “These findings show that the Earth’s response is much more dynamic than we thought and highlight the importance of feedback loops in the carbon cycle.”
Related website:
Purdue Isotope Ratio Ecology and Hydrology:
http://www.eas.purdue.edu/ireh/index.htm
Press release and abstract on the research in this release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/110421BowenCarbon.html
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[snip] the shriek from the collective crazed climate communist hippie society of paranormal climate science that just became alarmed over the fast dwindling funding of the ill begotten future painted by this study.
Small doses, small doses, please. :p
Unbelievable, how long do we have to put up with this drivel, do they not understand the very important role CO2 has within our eco system.
As they get more and more desperate they get more and more ridiculous.
The problem is that papers like the UK Guardian the Independent will love stuff like this.
Likewise the BBC.
Slightly off topic but …
From Tim Blair:
CRAZED CULT LEADER JOINS CRAZED CULT
Tim Blair
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 10:58am
The Daily Mail reports:
Crazed cult leader Charles Manson has broken a 20-year silence in a prison interview coinciding with the 40th anniversary of his conviction for the gruesome Sharon Tate murders – to speak out about global warming.
Somehow the CO2 recovery numbers have always struck me as extreme. When you look at the Mauna Loa seasonal signal, and the percentage of change that happens in a single season, it makes you realize that the absorption capability of the earth is vast.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/04/06/co2-monthly-mean-at-mauna-loa-leveling-off/
We can see that during the absorption part of the year 6-7 ppm can be removed in just that season. So if there were a desperate need to remove CO2 quickly we could do it by simply droping what we put into the atmosphere. I don’t, however, anticipate any such need.
the fact remains that nobody knows, ever did know, or ever will know with certainty just what was going on 56million years ago.
how do they know about the co2 levels? they observed layers of rock made from layers of dead plant material, which tells us what the plant was eating, which tells us what the atmosphere was like. now, using this twisted little path to explain the co2 levels at the time, they claim that they know the rate of change of co2 concentrations in the atmosphere?
what about weather? does a rock that’s 56 million years old tell you something about rain? how about cloud cover, or the migration of animals? For all we know the co2 levels at their test site changed due to the migratory habits of a large herbivore dropping dung nearby. The wonderful part about researching 56 million years back in time is that no one is EVER going to check your work.
Really and Truly I do Apologize. This is complete, uncheckable crap.
“A rapid growth of the biosphere, with a spread of forests, plants and carbon-rich soils to take in the excess carbon dioxide, could explain the quick recovery, Bowen said.”
Perhaps an abundance of “food” might account for this? I know, the “model” doesn’t account for common sense.
We look at our world and the universe with human eyes and more importantly, with a human lifespan. In terms of the latter, we see an apparently ageless and unchanging view but it’s a false impression. When looked at through the eyes of “deep” time, it is dynamic, violent and forever changing. There is no ideal static harmonious state which must be maintained. There never was and there never will be either.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-steady-state-environment-delusion/
Pointman
Has anyone else here besides me experiment with CO2 injection in Aquariums?
BenAW says:
April 22, 2011 at 5:00 am
Thanks for that link to the Azolla event — fascinating stuff!
“The event coincides precisely with a catastrophic decline in carbon dioxide levels, which fell from 3500 ppm in the early Eocene to 650 ppm during this event.”
So odd to hear declining CO2 levels as ‘catastrophic.’
Desert Yote,
I did, years ago. I had a 125 gallon tank and bought a fairly cheap injection unit. Don’t recall the manufacturer, but it used 12 gram CO2 cylinders. The plant growth really took off, to the point that I stopped using CO2 injection – the plants completely filled the aquarium. For some reason, the fish seemed to benefit too.
Just out of curiosity, are there any measurements of CO2 levels recorded for central Antarctica?
My limited logic tells me CO2 should accumulate there due to wind patterns and lack of plants.
If this was the case we should see increasing summer time temperature trends.
Why do they only consider ‘organic carbon’? They don’t want to admit the importance of the long term role of carbonate mineral precipitation and accumulation in the carbon cycle. They ignore limestone formation because it’s effective long term sequestration of CO2 necessitates the inclusion of a strong negative feedback into their models. This would not be good for their desired outcome.
The importance of long term sequestration of CO2 into limestones explains the trend of decreasing atmospheric CO2 over time, can also add to the explanation of seasonal atmospheric varialbility and is evidenced by the tremendous volumes of carbonate rock masses currently known on all continents and in all ocean basins.
I think they have their terms backwards.
If CO2 was higher geo-historically… And biomass was higher and more diverse than now… We must conclude that CO2 levels are catastrophically low now, BUT a recovery is in progress. Why would we want to return to near catastrophic low levels? Is there some other way to view this?? GK
EARTH’S Climate can be controled by capturing Conc: De-icers by installing Zero Discharge Systems (ZDS) in Desalination Plants around WORLD particularly in M.E. Hurricans will reduce, Icemass will grow in BOTH POLES & HIMALAYAS & thereby GLOBAL WARMING will ARREST & NO SEA LEVEL RISE.
John Johnston says:
April 22, 2011 at 5:36 am
“…I know of none that have provided category 1 knowledge. If you do, I seek enlightenment…”
OK Johnny, here is the definitive category 1 knowledge for your enlightenment:
Co2 is good for plants.
That’s it my friend…the short version. ;0)
What is normal?
30,000 years ? I would presume that they calculated the “fallout” from !!!!
Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, if you notice any similarity between these places, please, it is Global Warming thats done it !
(sarc of )
Yesterday we leaned the ozone hole was responsible for climate change in the Southern Hemisphere all the way into the tropics. Today we get a junk paper claiming this group of “scientists” can predict cause and effect of CO2 warming the planet 56 million years ago followed by 30,000 years of the planet going on a CO2 drinking binge.
Here are some facts they apparently overlooked: For more than 55 million years, Ellesmere Island located in Canada’s high Arctic remained in one place while the world around it changed. Fifty-five million years ago, verdant forests grew at 75° North latitude. These wetland forests, comprised of species now primarily found in China, grew on an alluvial plain where channels meandered back and forth and periodic floods buried stumps, logs, and leaves intact. Today the forests are preserved as coal seams that outcrop on the edges …of modern Ellesmere Island, where there are no forests, and the tallest vegetation grows less than 15 cm high. Large parts of the area are polar desert, subject to intensely cold and dark winters and minimal precipitation.
That’s Climate Change there! From 90 ft trees to hardly anything growing higher than a few centimeters now dark and frozen solid virtually year around. Moreover, here in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the oil sands deposits we’re constantly digging up marine reptiles from a time when my hometown was underwater from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. Now we’re 1214 ft above sea level – once western North America from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico was an area called The Western Interior Seaway, a present day era famous for its skeletons of sea monsters: mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs, ancient marine reptiles that lived during the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Plate tectonic changed everything – until and unless those so called “scientists” can account for every single event in historical time such as I mentioned above when presenting articles as presented then this paper isn’t worth the time it takes to read. What I can see with my own eyes are the marine reptiles we’re digging up on a constant basis so I know what my little part of this planet used to be before AGW even existed. And this period we’re digging up was warmer than now – it’s there in the oil sand!
Too silly for words!
Smokey says:
April 22, 2011 at 8:34 am
Desert Yote,
I did, years ago. I had a 125 gallon tank and bought a fairly cheap injection unit. Don’t recall the manufacturer, but it used 12 gram CO2 cylinders. The plant growth really took off, to the point that I stopped using CO2 injection – the plants completely filled the aquarium. For some reason, the fish seemed to benefit too.
###
Amazing isn’t it. I started playing around with manipulating CO2 back in the 80s. I have used Gas cylinders like you, yeast based CO2 generators, and decomposing vegetation (which I would NOT recommend unless you really know what you are doing). Personally, I like the elegance of the organic solutions, but the gas cylinders are easier to experiment with. Did you, by any chance take CO2 measurements?
I did. I sure wish I had my Aquarium logs. They were destroyed when my storage unit was ransacked by tweekers. Anyway, I found that if I increased the rate of CO2 injection, the dissolved CO2 would increase for a few days, then start to come down so that within a week I was unable to resolve an increase in CO2 levels from where they were before the injection rate increase, with the Hatch test kit I was using. The funny thing is that I saw an O2 increase instead. I took my measurements at 1630 after the main lights had been on for 9 hours.
Bowen worked with James Zachos, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to study the end of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, an approximately 170,000-year-long period of global warming that has many features in common with the world’s current situation, he said.
What features is he talking about? The available geological evidence indicates that the present has the lowest CO2 levels of the Phanerozoic.
When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, the Earth increased its ability to pull carbon from the air
===================================================
Woops!
Cut these people’s funding immediately….
…they just said that the planet sequesters CO2 faster than we can put it out
That obviously 390 ppm is low, that as CO2 levels drop the metabolism of the planet drops….
and that low levels of CO2 are not optimum
““During this prehistoric event billions of tons of carbon was released into the ocean, atmosphere and biosphere, causing warming of about 5 degrees Celsius,” Bowen said. “This is a good analog for the carbon being released from fossil fuels today.””
Did I read somewhere, some time ago that the CAGW leadership warned their ‘trusted minions’ that the public at large did not seem to be getting the AGW message and that there seemed to be necessary to ‘Change Tack’?
If they think dusting off and editing what “Scientists have known of this prehistoric event for 20 years” may be one good place to start, then it looks like, to me for one (after reading the e above article), that they are likely to be as successful as German scientists were during the early part of the twentieth century in proving that the German people were descendants of the Aryan race.
Anthony writes:
“Isn’t it great when you can announce results like that and not have to worry about tracking where the main component went?”
That says it all about Warmista climate science. Until they know where the CO2 is and where the alleged additional warming is, they should not refer to their work as science. Of course, being good Leftists, they treat “CO2” as a theoretical term. That way it does not matter that they cannot account for all the CO2, or so they think. And why shouldn’t they? As all Leftists constantly preach, everything is theoretical. Everything is a social construct, including science and all that it accounts for.
The new warmist meme: “It’s worse than YOU thought.”