From the American Society for Microbiology, a comprehensive report that suggests the need to integrate microbial processes into climate modeling. As they say: “The sum total of microbial activity is enormous, but the net effect of microbes on climate-relevant gases is currently not known…”
I think it is a very good idea, and the full report follows this press release.
Report seeks to integrate microbes into climate models
The models used to understand how Earth’s climate works include thousands of different variables from many scientific including atmospherics, oceanography, seismology, geology, physics and chemistry, but few take into consideration the vast effect that microbes have on climate. Now, a new report from the American Academy of Microbiology, “Incorporating Microbial Processes into Climate Models”, offers a plan for integrating the latest understanding of the science of microbiology into climate models.
“Climate scientists and microbiologists usually work in isolation from each other, and yet their work is intimately connected. Microbes are critical players in every geochemical cycle relevant to climate. “
“The sum total of microbial activity is enormous, but the net effect of microbes on climate-relevant gases is currently not known,” says Edward DeLong of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-chaired the report with Caroline Harwood of the University of Washington.
The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in scientific recognition of the diversity of the microbial world. New DNA-sequencing technologies spurred by the Human Genome Project have made it technically and economically possible to sequence the collective DNA from whole microbial communities. This approach, called metagenomics, has revealed a previously undreamed-of degree of diversity in the microbial world. These microbial community analyses many “‘omics” approaches, such as proteomics and metabolomics, that together provide a detailed picture of community function, potential and change over time.
The report is based on a colloquium convened by the Academy in 2011. Experts in diverse disciplines in microbiology as well as computational and climate modeling participated in the meeting designed to identify specific efforts and activities that will lead to improved integration of microbial biology, biogeochemistry, and climate modeling.
“While the gap between these disciplines is daunting, the need to bridge it is urgent and the science and technology needed to begin to do so is within reach,” says Harwood.
The report suggests a multipronged approach, breaking the challenge into manageable parts. The first recommendation is to choose a few specific biogeochemical cycles that are important, microbially driven and tractable to serve as demonstration projects. Specifically, the report identifies methane, carbon storage and nitrous oxide.
Other recommendations include:
- Assess current data collection methodologies and develop a monitoring/data collection strategy
- Implement validation processes to integrate data collection, modeling and experimentation
- Facilitate and provide incentives for collaborations and interdisciplinary training
- Address technology needs
“There is clear evidence that microbes can have an enormous impact on climate.. In light of the increasingly urgent need to understand and find ways to mitigate climate change, the centrality of microbes in global biogeochemical cycles, can no longer be ignored,” says DeLong.
A full copy of the report and more detailed recommendations can be found on the Academy website at http://bit.ly/aamclimate.
The American Academy of Microbiology is the honorific leadership group of the American Society for Microbiology. The mission of the Academy is to recognize scientific excellence, as well as foster knowledge and understanding in the microbiological sciences. A full list of Academy colloquia reports can be found at http://academy.asm.org/colloquia. For more information about the American Society for Microbiology, visit http://www.asm.org.
“We’re probably just bus drivers created by microbes. They know (swarm intelligence) that they have to get off this rock before the sun incinerates it a few billion years from now.”
I thought the grains bred us as their servants.
Microbiologists running out of funding. Solution: link with global warming and climate modelling. Silly but effective.
As I have stated many times, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is directly related to the rate of eukaryote metabolism, which is directly related to temperature.
I agree that this is worth looking into. I personally think that the spike in temperatures two summers ago was largely associated with and possibly directly caused by the enormous release of methane in the Gulf Oil Disaster. I think that the warming was probably “local”, but over a significant patch of surface area within a few thousand miles of the Gulf in the variable directions of the prevailing winds. However, prevailing wisdom was that most of the methane was forced into the ocean (more or less dissolved) and almost immediately eaten by bacteria because they didn’t find as much methane in the air immediately above the water as they expected when they looked for it. I’m not convinced by the vigor of their “looking” — a lot of methane could have been released over a very large surface area of ocean after a substantial lag, over time, and still been only “trace amounts” over any given patch of surface at any given time — but I don’t really know if bacteria are capable of eating the methane that aggressively exist in sufficient quantities in the ocean to do the job. Given the amount of uneaten methane in the world, and the fact that methane exists in the first place because it is NOT easily metabolized and is given off as waste by many organic-compound-chomping organisms that haven’t evolved the ability to use it as part of their diet, I’m a bit skeptical, but am as curious as the next person to have better knowledge here.
One would think that one could visit the parts of the ocean where there are unstable hydrate clathrates giving off methane that is presumably making it to the surface and at the very least figure out why they fail to eat this “potentially catastrophic” methane in one place but supposedly ate all of the “equally potentially catastrophic” methane in another place that was being released in quantities orders of magnitude greater.
There is ample opportunity for confirmation bias at work here. If there was a huge bolus of methane from the GOD, and it had a measurable impact on global temperatures (as it well might, as the atmosphere is not optically saturated in methane where it is saturated in CO_2, so one expects linear, not log linear gain), then the warming then proves that the GHE exists (not an issue for most skeptics, but anathema to a certain class that can’t seem to understand TOA IR spectra) and is very sensitive to gain in unsaturated gases. Good for the catastrophic warmists. It also shows that it is saturated in CO_2 and hence insensitive to further increases. Bad for the warmists. It shows that the climate is absolutely not as sensitive as the catastrophic warmists have been asserting — a huge bolus of new GHG in a channel with linear response produced a linear — not nonlinearly amplified “catastrophic” — increase in mean surface temperature, one that is quite localized (and mixed in with El Nino so it is still only a small part of the average for that year) that quickly enough went away so that literally no trace of the GHE amplification is left a year or two later.
Baaad for the catastrophic warmists. No catastrophe, or evidence of emergent catastrophe (fluctuation/dissipation theorem, large fluctuations should take longer and longer to dissipate as one approaches a critical point, a.k.a. a “tipping point” to catastrophists). Sadly, climate scientists seem oblivious to the idea of dynamic susceptibility and the limits it places on the feedback/climate sensitivity already…
Improved understanding of biological production and consumption of methane, especially in the high pressure cold environment at the bottom of the ocean, might be very valuable indeed.
rgb
Small grammatical burp implies there is a missing word in “thousands of different variables from many scientific including atmospherics,”
And, of course, we know that there is much more that affects the world than mere thousands of factors. The “thousands” was mentioned to make the models sound impressive, while it is apparent that there are significant omissions and other problems with climate models.
I see that that the report’s cover page shows South Island, New Zealand. WUWT?
Is it to be insinuated that those of us that reside there are microbial?
We probably are, given that even WUWT’s spellchecker doesn’t recognise ‘Zealand’. 🙂
This is information that was known decades ago, but ignored by physicists who decided that all the significant factors could be modeled on their computers. They told their bosses that they didn’t need the biologists. Just give them more computers and they could account for everything in their computer models. I suggest reading the Freeman Dyson Interview.
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151
I read that 95% of organic live represent microbes….. although each one has
a microscobial effect on the on the climate….the combined effect is what counts….
Maybe the microbes contain Trenberth’s missing heat?
Let’s hear it for the methanotrophs! And eat more beef.
Thanks, Anthony, it’s about time this topic was discussed! The factors that influence climate go far beyond the simple carbon dioxide calculations by Arrhenius that Holdren et. al. cling to so tightly!
I once saw the amazing J.W. “Bill” Costerton give a lecture at Northwestern University about sub-surface microbacteria, a little-studied group of organisms that dwell as far as miles underground in the pores and cracks of the earth’s surface. I recall he said that the total mass of these life-forms far outweighed the entire mass of the surface biosphere! What we pitiable humans don’t know…..
Bill is a remarkable guy, if you want to read one of his best, seek out his article “How Bacteria Stick” published in Scientific American, 1978.
Read “The Deep Hot Biosphere” by Thomas Gold. It will challenge all of your orthodoxies.
How about they incorporate the 50+ missing important natural factors before they worry about microbes? Let’s include the Sun, the clouds, the oceans, etc, first! Then worry about the biomass of microbes living two miles down in the rock and how they might affect CO2 and GHG levels. Yikes!
THe microbes from the rock are estimated to equal a layer of slime 8 feet deep over the entire surface of the planet—now that’s biomass!
Rob Crawford says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:24 am
“We’re probably just bus drivers created by microbes. They know (swarm intelligence) that they have to get off this rock before the sun incinerates it a few billion years from now.”
I thought the grains bred us as their servants.
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The joke about it is that humans are the microbes’ creation to be able to move around.
If anyone here has been watching Iain Stewart’s How to Grow a Planet, it’s been wonderful to watch something, so far, one more episode to go, that hasn’t twisted this to carbon dioxide demonisation because his story wouldn’t exist without carbon dioxide! But the second episode really brought home that it’s the flowers driving the evolution of animals.
And it all started with bacteria in the ocean world before oxygen which, who?, first began taking in sunlight for life and the second began to create oxygen in the process which changed the planet completely, and still the only life form that can create food from the sun’s energy directly. The rest, it’s inescapable conclusion, has been bacteria changing form to better spread, the first plants, and in the process has somehow brought into existence animal life in all its diversity to help do it. 🙂
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=38389 short spiel
https://www.lovefilm.com/browse/contributor/63230/Iain_Stewart.html will be available on DVD
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bywvr for those who can watch Beeb progs online
Robert Brown
Given the amount of uneaten methane in the world, and the fact that methane exists in the first place because it is NOT easily metabolized and is given off as waste by many organic-compound-chomping organisms that haven’t evolved the ability to use it as part of their diet, I’m a bit skeptical, but am as curious as the next person to have better knowledge here.
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Although methanotrophs can metabolize any hydrocarbons from gas to bitumen, methane is the easiest hydrocarbon to metabolize. Unlike the niche-market methanogens, methanotrophs can operate in aerobic conditions as well as anerobic ones, allowing them to survive and flourish in any oceanic environment where hydrocarbons are present, from sediment to surface, from pole to pole. These ubiquitous and seemingly important microbes are also present in lake sediments, terrestrial soils, in the hot depths of the mantle, and in Siberian permafrost: Methane IS easily metabolized:
http://living-petrol.blogspot.com/
I heard on the radio some 8-10 years back that a new species of phytoplankton had been discovered that exists in huge quantities, and they gave what they described as a conservative estimate that it potentially was taking in some 60% of the carbon cycle.
Just another group of folks who need cash.
From their website:
Today, changes due to human activity are causing similar large scale global effects in as little as 100 years. There is clear evidence that microbes can have an enormous impact on climate but their responses and impacts cannot currently be measured. In light of ongoing global change and the centrality of microbes in global biogeochemical cycles, their specific responses and activities in the context of climate change modeling can no longer be ignored.