From the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres a clear indication for those “CO2 is plant food” scoffers that the plants don’t care what they think.
Productivity of land plants may be greater than previously thought
Researchers recommend the reworking of global carbon models in Nature
This press release is available in German.
London – The global uptake of carbon by land plants may be up to 45 per cent more than previously thought. This is the conclusion of an international team of scientists, based on the variability of heavy oxygen atoms in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere driven by the El Niño effect. As the oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide were converted faster than expected during the El Niño years, current estimates for the uptake of carbon by plants are probably too low. These should be corrected upwards, say the researchers in the current issue of the scientific journal NATURE. Instead of 120 petagrams of carbon, the annual global vegetation uptake probably lies between 150 and 175 petagrams of carbon. This value is a kind of gross national product for land plants and indicates how productive the biosphere of the Earth is. The reworking of this so-called global primary productivity would have significant consequences for the coupled carbon cycle-climate model used in climate research to predict future climate change.
Lisa Welp of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego and her colleagues evaluated the data for the global isotopic composition of the greenhouse gas CO2 over the last 30 years. This analysis indicated regular fluctuations between years and a connection with the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific. Overall, El Niño years are warmer. They are also characterised by greater precipitation in South America and less intensive monsoons in Southeast Asia.
The researchers found a more rapid recovery of the
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isotopic ratios following the El Niño events than assumed, indicating a shorter conversion time for CO2 in the terrestrial biosphere. On the basis of these data, the authors calculate the so-called global primary productivity (GPP). They now propose correcting this in the global models from 120 to 150-175 petagrams) of carbon annually.
Since 1977 the isotopic ratios in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere (18O/16O und 13C/12C) have been measured in order to better understand the global carbon cycle, as the exchange processes between the biosphere, the atmosphere and the oceans are reflected in these values. “We assume that the redistribution of moisture and rain in the tropics during El Niño raises the 18O/16O ratio in precipitation and plant water and then signals this to the atmospheric carbon dioxide”, explains Lisa Welp the new approach of the researchers.
“Our atmosphere is a perfect blender. Changes in its levels of trace gases – such as carbon dioxide – reflect the overall release and uptake of trace gases from all sources. So if you measure the carbon exchange of a forest ecosystem, for example, you “only” get the net exchange of all the carbon taken up by the trees for photosynthesis and all the carbon released by the trees and soil “, writes Dr. Matthias Cuntz of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in his commentary in the same issue of NATURE. The gross-exchange fluxes, such as photosynthesis, are however accessible only with difficulty. “Global estimates therefore depend upon a number of assumptions. This includes, for example, how many of the CO2 molecules entering a plant are actually fixed by photosynthesis. The researchers of Lisa Welp’s team assume that around 43 per cent of all CO2 molecules entering a plant are taken up by the plant. If this were only 34%, the estimate would fall to about 120 billion tons of carbon – that is, to the currently accepted value”, for Matthias Cuntz reason of thought. In his opinion, the new findings do not completely upset the research to date. Nevertheless, they demonstrate an interesting new method for the determination of plant productivity over large areas. In future, the combination of several isotopic methods with conventional measurements represents a promising approach.
The now published study was carried out under the direction of Ralph F. Keeling, a professor of oceanography and the son of the late Charles David Keeling, after whom the so-called Keeling curve was named. This graph shows the concentration of CO2 of the volcano Mauna Loa on Hawaii since the year 1957. In the 1950s the CO2 fraction in the earth’s atmosphere was still around 315 ppm. In 2011, by comparison, it has already increased to 390 ppm. With his measurements Keeling was able to show for the first time that the concentration of the greenhouse gas increases in relation to changing land use and the combustion of fossil fuels. This new study underscores the importance of long-term measurements of the isotope 18O in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere from the scientific point of view, as this occupies a key position between the carbon cycle and the hydrogen cycle.
Publications:
Lisa R. Welp, Ralph F. Keeling, Harro A. J. Meijer, Alane F. Bollenbacher, Stephen C. Piper, KeiYoshimura, Roger J. Francey, Colin E. Allison & Martin Wahlen (2011): Interannual variability in the oxygen isotopes of atmospheric CO2 driven by El Niño.
29 September 2011, Vol. 477, Nature 579, 579-582. doi:10.1038/nature10421
Matthias Cuntz (2011): A dent in carbon´s gold standard.
29 September 2011, Vol. 477, Nature 579, 547-548.
Links:
CO2- and Isotopic Measurement Program of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2.html
Atmospheric Measurement Program of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, USA:
Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, Tasmania, Australia:
http://www.csiro.au/places/Cape-Grim.html
El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o
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Here’s an interesting illustration of the effect increased CO2 has on plants, and unlike Mr. Gores’s faked high school physics experiment, you can see this one in time lapse from start to finish as it actually occurred.
“Plants gobbling up CO2 – 45% more than thought”
And the end result of this ‘discovery’ will most likely be that developed countries will be sending 45% more of their wealth to nations with huge forests under REDD.
Yea, but how much CO2 are they soaking up?
Moderator: wordpress does not recognize superscripts and subscripts in HTML so my last post should read … Oh yea? How much CO^2 are they soaking up?
REPLY: I left this alone, because if you use ^ then you get “squared”, and that would be no better than the label on the bottle in Al Gore’s Climate 101 video. – Anthony
Gail Combs says:
September 29, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Yes the plants will suck the CO2 down to 200ppm (where growth stops) within about 20 mins of sunrise in a greenhouse that does not have CO2 raised to 1000ppm to 15000ppm artificially.
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Gail, Co2 is reduced 10 ppm every six months….just going from winter to summer
In my work I have to do a lot of cultures, plankton, phyto, etc without artificially injecting CO2 it would be impossible…
Instead of 120 petagrams of carbon, the annual global vegetation uptake probably lies between 150 and 175 petagrams of carbon.
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The research described has nothing to do with “CO2 is plant food” debating point.
The article is about the CO2 turn over rate as being higher than previously estimated. In other words the amount consumed by plants and also later returned to the air by decomposition. The decomposition rate is also higher than previously estimated.
This is a separate issue from whether increased CO2 will increase crop production.
Paddy says:
September 29, 2011 at 11:29 am
Does this study call into question the assumptions regarding the half-life of atmospheric CO2 emissions?
REPLY:
The Warmistas studiously ignore the rapid drop-off of C14O2 after the 60’s nuclear testing by the always-cheating Commies (their Slave-Empire’s long-overdue demise still mourned by all Watermelons).
At least now a few Warmistas begudgingly admit that a newly generated CO2 molecule only resides in the atmosphere for 5 years before it encounters a chloroplast.
Their so-called models (fantasies, actually) deliberately underplay the major plantgrowth-stimulus due to rising CO2.
Warmistas have become the champion-maximizers of confirmation bias: CO2 is evil , therefore discussion of its multiple benefits is downplayed, scorned, or outright censored. Ditto for how every past warming benefited civilization, how past coldings had dreadful sociological effects, including famines, miltant migrations, and endless wars.
It’s immense fun to ask a Warmista about how much plants like CO2, then watch the foam curdle on their lying lips. The more ‘sincere’ a Warmista, the more fun it is to expose the immense holes in his/her pathetic pseudo-arguments, which in the final analysis are nothing but special pleading for a statist dictatorship by a self-anointed elite of hardened Lefties.
“Fred H. Haynie
Now they need to quantify the rates of uptake of the ocean’s greater biomass. ”
Fred, there will be no major change in the oceans biomass due to the nature of the aquatic biosphere. At the moment the yearly amount of carbon fixed is approximately 10 times the total biomass.
A large fraction of this carbon mass is politely termed ‘snow’, but is really shit.
It rains down from the surface and starts toward the bottom. A range of creatures/micro-organisms feast on it on the way down, but a fair fraction makes it to the bottom.
This process denudes the surface of CO2. The argument that CO2 in the oceans was at ‘equilibrium’ prior to us burning fossil fuels is as stupid as claiming that oxygen is in equilibrium.
Here is the distribution of dissolved oxygen in the ocean
http://files.myopera.com/nielsol/blog/MeHg_O2_v_DepthGraph_l.png
As you can see, where there is little light flux, and so little marine photosynthesis, hypoxic conditions occur close to the surface. in colder water, the hypoxic region is closer to the surface.
Now, at the bottom of the oxygen organic carbon is either converted into methane or CO2 by the microoganisms, or it mineralizes, to become oil in the distant future.
The oceanic carbon cycle is the opposite of the oxygen one, Oceans are high in carbon at the bottom, and very low at the surface. The denuded surface waters must get their carbon from the atmosphere or from the very slow migration of CO2 (including as carbonates), from the bottom.
All we are doing by burning fossil fuel, is increasing the amount of snow that falls.
The Hare-Brained physicist who post here is a great proponent of a pre-Industrial [CO2] ‘equilibrium’, but has never heard of a steady state.
DirkH says:
September 29, 2011 at 10:32 am
“This means that the European CO2 market will be flooded with CDM credits and the prize for a CO2 permit will drop to zero real soon now… (more supply than demand).”
From the original article:
“This value is a kind of gross national product for land plants and indicates how productive the biosphere of the Earth is.”
I’m just wondering if someone might like to investigate any possible relationship between the collapse of the carbon market/”consensus science” VIEW with the collapse of the Eurozone economies? My understanding of economics theory (very limited) is that the big chaotic factor that underlies the health of an economy is the psychological motivations of various groups. Such as traders, politicians, consumers, business leaders etc. Very hard to model :-).
I don’t have the requisite skills to do this – but just thinkin’. Willis? Roy Spencer?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 29, 2011 at 11:13 am
Ferdinand,
Your argument based on mass balance assumes that the long-term behavior of sources and sinks does not change significantly. The C13/C12 data tell us otherwise. Try this exercise. Assume that all the atmospheric CO2 from organic origins has an index value of -27.3 (graphite standard) and all the CO2 from inorganic origins has an index value of the PDB standard. Now divide the measured index values by -27.3 to get an estimate of the fraction of the total CO2 concentration that is from organic origins. I find this fraction has increased from about 28% in 1990 to about 31% in 2010. That 3% change is possibly attributable to anthropogenic emissions. If there are long-term natural fractionation processes at work, the anthropogenic contribution would be even less. To put this in graphical perspective, multiply the calculated fraction by the measured total calculation and subtract that value from the total to get the amount that has inorganic origins and plot the results with time. This should show you that this natural inorganic CO2 has been steadily increasing at only a slightly lower rate than the organic CO2 and amounts to more than 2/3 of the total increase.
Its raining in texas
Don’t know where else to post it
DocMartyn says:
September 29, 2011 at 3:43 pm
How much of that “snow” is depleted in C13 (organic) and how much inorganic? How long does it take that fractionation process to recycle into the atmosphere in the form of upwelling that starts a la-Nina? Clouds and rain are also involved in a fractionation process but on a much shorter time scale.
” the plants don’t care what they think”
Time to send the plants to the re-education camps in the North.
// SATIRE //
STUPID Plants, here we are pumping more CO2 and the plants just gobble it up!
I believe this is PROOF that the plants are being paid off by the Oil Companies to do this!!!
Kevin Kilty says:
September 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm
You can use superscript and subscript characters built into the font at hand.
See my Guide to WUWT, down at the bottom. You can write CO₂ as CO₂ Often you can cut and paste the hard to type character from there, as I do here with ² and °.
Oops – WordPress goofed. I’m shocked, shocked! This might work:
You can write CO₂ as CO₂
CO, ampersand, hash, 8322, semi-colon.
“Fred H. Haynie says:
How much of that “snow” is depleted in C13 (organic) and how much inorganic? ”
It is mostly organic. On the way down it is eaten by aerobics, which is why there is not oxygen. O2 is not at equilibrium, because carbon isn’t at equilibrium. When the PO2 drops, the anaerobes take over, they oxidize the carbon, releasing methane and CO2.
You cannot point to a depth and do a 14C measurement as say it is this old. The carbon at any depth is a mix for fresh carbon (from organic carbon on the way down being converted to CO2) and old carbon on the way up, either as CO2 or CH4 being oxidized by aerobics.
Unlike Ferdinande constant pleas, the oceans are not, nor have they ever been, since live arose, in equilibrium with respect to carbon. They cannot be.
Do you know the ration of organic carbon at the bottom of the oceans compared with dissolved carbon?
There is about 700 GtC in the water, Co2, carbonate and organic matter (living and dead). A 150 GtC soft layer of mud/detritus and at least 20,000,000 GtC of compressed organic Kerogen at the bottom of the ocean. We don’t actually know how much. What we do know is that all this crap came from living biotic sources and was fixed at the top of the ocean.
The EPA of the United States says that co2 is a pollutant. Plants are gobbling pollution.
But don’t be a dope and call it CO².
Yes like Gore did in his video
These new numbers just make the Carbon cycle more complicated.
It is a little strange that our 3.8% of Carbon emissions seem to be so consistently balanced out by a 1.9% increase in the net absorption by Plants and Oceans, just like when our emissions were 0.1% of the total emissions, Plants and Ocean absorbed 0.05% of them.
The difference in the numbers is getting too large now (237 billion tons emitted by Plants and Oceans versus Humans at 9.5 billion tons) for this to be so consistent. It is almost too coincidental.
How the heck can the Science be settled when they don’t even know the basics.
There was a biology resource book for teachers (classroom demonstrations, experiments, background info., etc.) published by the State of California in 1967. In the chapter for plants and photosynthesis was this paragraph: “It is estimated that around 200 billion tons of CO2 annually are photosynthesized by green plants globally. About 10% is by terrestrial plants and 90% by aquatic plants–both fresh water and marine.
I converted 175 petagrams to tons and the result was approximately 193 billion tons. Not bad for a forty-four year old estimate back when no one thought about global warming.
Jeff says:
September 29, 2011 at 11:44 am
Freeman Dyson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson has some ideas on this subject. He says that CO2 levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees. He figures it would take a trillion trees to “remove” all carbon from the atmosphere.
I guess you could look a this, roll your eyes, and say, “Here we go… another massive government expenditure.” My own thought is that it might be undertaken as some kind of joint public-private venture, with some sort of harvesting rights way down the road.
It seems a productive solution that would please greens and have proven benefits.
DocMartyn says:
September 29, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Unlike Ferdinande constant pleas, the oceans are not, nor have they ever been, since live arose, in equilibrium with respect to carbon. They cannot be.
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otherwise they would die……………………..
Negative feedback?
any serious grower of marijuana knows those particular plants will use 1500PPM CO2 and show vigorous signs of increased growth.
this site is great. a huge help.