Global warming threat seen in fertile soil of northeastern US forests
In ‘vicious cycle,’ heat may boost carbon release into atmosphere, UCI-led study finds
— Irvine, Calif., June 11, 2012 —
Vast stores of carbon in U.S. forest soils could be released by rising global temperatures, according to a study by UC Irvine and other researchers in today’s online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The scientists found that heating soil in Wisconsin and North Carolina woodlands by 10 and 20 degrees increased the release of carbon dioxide by up to eight times. They showed for the first time that most carbon in topsoil is vulnerable to this warming effect.
“We found that decades-old carbon in surface soils is released to the atmosphere faster when temperatures become warmer,” said lead author Francesca Hopkins, a doctoral researcher in UCI’s Earth system science department. “This suggests that soils could accelerate global warming through a vicious cycle in which man-made warming releases carbon from soils to the atmosphere, which, in turn, would warm the planet more.”
Soil, which takes its rich, brown color from large amounts of carbon in decaying leaves and roots, stores more than twice as much of the element as does the atmosphere, according to United Nations reports. Previously, it wasn’t known whether carbon housed in soil for a decade or longer would be released faster under higher temperatures, because it’s difficult to measure. The team, using carbon isotopes, discovered that older soil carbon is indeed susceptible to warming.
Forest lands, which contain about 104 billion tons of carbon reserves, have been one of the biggest unknowns in climate change predictions. Northeastern woodlands that were once farm fields are currently one of the Earth’s beneficial carbon sinks, holding nearly 26 billion tons. But climate scientists worry that trees and soils could become sources of greenhouse gas emissions rather than repositories.
“Our results suggest that large stores of carbon that built up over the last century as forests recovered will erode with rising temperatures,” said Susan Trumbore of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and UCI, who led the research team, which also included Margaret Torn, head of the Climate & Carbon Sciences Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Microbes in soil near tree roots, in particular, eat carbon, and it’s then diffused into the air as carbon dioxide, already the largest greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
“These are carbon dioxide sources that, in effect, we can’t control,” Hopkins said. “We could control how much gasoline we burn, how much coal we burn, but we don’t have control over how much carbon the soil will release once this gets going.”
Hopkins, who is also a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute, received funding from the National Science Foundation, the ARCS Foundation, and a Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Graduate Fellowship. Additional support was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Forest Service, Michigan Technological University and the Canadian Forest Service.
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First, this really isn’t surprising. Anyone that has ever worked with bacteria and petri dishes can tell you the bacteria are far more active at warmer temperatures. That’s why cultures are incubated to enhance growth.
I think the thing really missing from this study is the fact that the surrounding flora will likely utilize much of the CO2 released from the forest floor. They make no mention of where it goes, only that heating the soil allows for more bio-action by CO2 producing microbes.
The CO2 then gets sequestered in the trees and plants, until such time they die and decay.
I really can’t get too worked up about this.
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The missing thing, as always, is negative feedback. If Nature worked the way these idiots think it works, no living thing (including these idiots) would exist.
Fortunately for most living things, Nature doesn’t work that way. And even more fortunately, negative feedback at the cultural and economic level is starting to wipe out these idiots in the countries that still function. The idiots will continue their genocide in the countries that have ceased functioning, like USA and UK. At some point the functional countries will simply take over the resources of the failed countries, which might be the best thing in the long run.
Leg says:
June 12, 2012 at 12:32 am
Did they measure this in the field or bring soil into the lab and heat it?
She brought it into the lab.
“Francesca Hopkins of the University of California at Irvine collected soil from the two forests in jars and then measured how much carbon dioxide the soil emitted as she warmed the containers.”
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/carbon-in-soil-could-speed-climate-change-study-finds/article_a478ec91-92be-592a-ad4e-f9684f855bb0.html
davidmhoffer, beautifully summarized
A Nobel Prize, maybe?
Luckily, other scientists have the solution for this serious problem:
“To mitigate global climate change, a portfolio of strategies will be needed to keep the atmospheric CO2 concentration below a dangerous level. Here a carbon sequestration strategy is proposed in which certain dead or live trees are harvested via collection or selective cutting, then buried in trenches or stowed away in above-ground shelters. ”
http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/3/1/1
And then pave them over with asphalt.
Just another confirmation that temperature drives CO2
So, if the Holocene Climate Optimum was 10C warmer, world-wide (and that is what Wiki says, don’t know how the AGW crowd missed editing that one), Why are we not ‘Venus’ already?
The more CO2 the better the new trees grow, or don’t these people know that. And, since CO2 has no part in driving climate/temperature what’s the problem?
So during the warm summer growing season the forest floor produces more carbon dioxide, resulting in healthier forests. Great.
In commercial greenhouses using carbon dioxide fertilization, increasing the CO2 content of the air from 0,03 vol% to 0,1 vol% results in three times higher photosynthetic efficiency. This produces a 20 – 30% increased harvest, better quality fruit, stronger generative parts, greater disease resistance and an earlier harvest.
Typical CO2 ppm in the greenhouses are:
Potted plants 600 – 900 ppm
Bedding plants 600 – 800 ppm
Clove 300 – 1.000 ppm
Roses 750 – 1.000
Cucumber 1.000 – 2.000 ppm
Tomatoes 1.000 – 2.000 ppm
Salad 1000 ppm
Peppers 1000 ppm
So here’s the issue… “control”… if we ever need reminding…
“These are carbon dioxide sources that, in effect, we can’t control,” Hopkins said. “We could control how much gasoline we burn, how much coal we burn, but we don’t have control over how much carbon the soil will release once this gets going.”
For “we” see: Agenda 21, UN.
What conference is approaching that these absolutely rediculous studies are coming out ahead of?
Paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/08/1203769109.full.pdf+html
John M Reynolds
According to press releases of this study:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1558.html
even forestration (of the Artic) will strenghten the warming so we seem to be doomed.
Opps. Sorry. That last link was the wrong paper. Here is the Soil Carbon paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/07/1120603109.full.pdf+html
John M Reynolds
davidmhoffer, I didn’t say that more CO2 increased growth rates but that, according to the dendro mob, higher temperatures do.
There we go again, the favourite Alarmist notions of tipping points, death spirals and runaway catastrophes, all of which are rooted in an apocalyptic worldview which dates right back to the Garden of Eden.
No problem here. A two minute search turned up a much more comprehensive study that found that while soil bacteria do initially produce more CO2 the process gets tuned down in a year or so. The research included a computer model, so it has to be right. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116832
When I was in grad school there was that little thing called a search of the literature — but that was a LOT of years ago. I guess it has fallen out of fashion.
Tony Hansen says:
June 12, 2012 at 12:31 am
Is that 10 and 20 degrees C or F?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes. Which ever suits the skeer story.
We didn’t know until just now that the rate of bacterial activity increases with temperature? What really new science. The only biology course I’ve taken was about 50 years ago, but I did start up a waste water plant (near a Holiday Inn) and casual observation indicated that both aerobic and anaerobic digestion rates were related to temperature. Did I miss an opportunity to publish new science?
This piece is written like children’s fairy story, not science. I’d be embarrassed to be associated with an institution that allows “researchers” to put out drivel like this.
Me old mate Philip Bradley says;
“As this hasn’t happened in the past, we can safely conclude that increased CO2 emissions from warmer soils has no effect on the climate.”
Actually Philip, studies have shown, (it’s rather hard to get ancient incomprehensible systems into an empirical state) that temperatures decrease after higher concentrations of CO2 in atmosphere by around only 800 years.
The vicious cycle of life. It must be stopped or we’re all going to die?
10-20 Centigrad ?!
Mike Busby @ur momisugly June 12, 2012 at 12:43 am
One decent bushfire would release umpteen hundreds of tons/ years of CO2. As it does in some parts of Australia’s noth west every year.
Is Canada part of North West Australia? …. could be I guess.
Now Think!!! 🙂
This is a perfect confirmation of ewhat M salby claims about the carbon cycle. They shot them selves in the foot! This more proof of that “warming is at the wheel and CO2 is behind back in the bus”. Its conclusion and confirmation af Salbys theory is worth it own article here on WUWT and there are many many implcations for the CAGW thery with theese findings. The conclusion made by these authors is just 180 degree wrong!! If they realized what salby is putting forward they would never published it because its confirming the opposit of what they are claiming and opens up and indicates that there are factors driving the ended /hiatus warming period..
Shouldn’t we thank them for this research proving the CO2 is NOT the driver and is in fact rising in concentration because of the temperature increasing from some other factor??? We know from the historical record that C02 lags behind the temperature increase. They’ve effectively disproven the CO2 as the culprit.
Ian Middleton says:
June 12, 2012 at 12:37 am
“I thought water vapor was the biggest ghg.”
I have noticed several recent news articles that refer to CO2 as being the biggest or largest GHG.
It is almost as if there is a concentrated effort to slowly add this thought here and there hoping it will infiltrate into people thinking that this is correct.
This study ignores how the forest fauna is likely to react to heating. They basically heated some soil in the dark and noted that CO_2 was released.
A much more realistic test would be to compare the carbon content per square kilometre of forest (and soil) in Wisconsin to the carbon content of forest in a place 10-20 degrees warmer. So … is the Amazon rainforest particularly noted as low carbon environment?