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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but we don’t have control over how much carbon the soil will release once this gets going.”
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they keep looking for runaway global warming — tipping point
….tell me again, how much of that CO2 is contributed by man
I haven’t read the whole paper but some important points that may make the whole thing a waste of research time and money.
First, the 10 and 20 degrees they are talking about is Celcius, so 17 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit well beyond any anticipated increase.
Second, the soils where incubated in the lab, so any natural processes that would occur in nature where probably absent. Also the elevated temperature was maintain continuously, it did not cycle up and down like the real wold daily temperature would. And the soil was incubated in glass jars, meaning the heat was felt equally from all sides, a unnatural condition as anyone who has ever dug a hole knows temperature drops with depth for any reasonable conditions.
And lastly, the soils were from the ongoing FACE experiments. Those are the experiments where large areas are subject to increased levels of CO2 for years. So these soils would have had more CO2 than naturally occurring forest soils.
The increase in temperature will increase the rates of many reactions, including most of the hundreds of other processes in the carbon cycle. That includes plant growth. So the cycle will speed up. Just looking at one part of the cycle and not the others is poor science. Just as looking at only one aspect of an economic or policy decision leads to poor outcomes. But most people love sound bites and scare tactics.
Rob Carter says: June 12, 2012 at 12:48 am
Is it a coincidence this and all the other scare stories start to appear in the run up to an environment conference (rio 2012); ramp up the scare tactics to get the msm interested.
— — —
I don’t think its coincidence. On the front page of The Vancouver Sun today:
“Drier summers in the Lower Mainland will require communities to find new ways to conserve water in the coming decades, says a major new study on climate change adaptation released Monday.”
“The $750,000 Climate Change Adaptation Project report, led by the University of Waterloo and paid for by the insurance company Intact Financial Corp., is meant to provide a blueprint for adapting to climate change.”
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Drier+summers+Lower+Mainland+will+require+ways+conserve+water+study/6766316/story.html#ixzz1xa5BlJEg”
How does an increased hydrological cycle cause less rain in Vancouver, and all other cities in Canada (unless dry is a good thing for a particular city, then it will get wetter /sarc)?
“Wisconsin and North Carolina woodlands ”
Hmmmm. Looks nice.
Did these “scientists” ever check out the “carbon release” from old garbage heaps or used car lots?
Could be a project just waiting for them to think of it!
In 2011, it looks like Plants, Oceans and Soils absorbed more CO2 than ever before at 2.85 ppm CO2.
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/424/co2absorpppm17502011.png
These papers are becoming scarier and scarier as time goes on as well farther divorced from reality as time goes on. Why do they need to do this? Its like climate-scare-porn or something. It is natural for us to like a good scare but why does it need to be science journals.
I think we have a new climate meme, “Vicious AGW”.
@alex Heyworth
“But wait a minute! Isn’t rising temperature also supposed to promote tree growth? Isn’t that what tree ring proxies are all about?”
+++++++++++++
Hey, USA, Remember that big Blank Spot on the map north of the continental USA? It’s right next to that ice block of ice you bought from the Russians with a Point named after someone in the family of the Prez of Barbados. It’s called ‘Ca-na-da’ which is a mispelling of the aboriginal name “Cnd”. Some aspirant Canadian from England was trying to get the name on record from a local who spelled it out for him: “‘C’, eh? ‘N’, eh? ‘D’, eh?” and not used to the local accent he wrote CANADA. Tourist!
So when Canada warms up 10-20 degrees all of it will be covered from head to foot (that’s the stinky part known as Lake Erie) with trees, I can guarantee you that! We like trees. We grow trees everywhere. We turn them into hockey sticks, play games, drink beer then break them. You can even see it on TV. Adding another (approx) 1 trillion trees to Canada is presently impossible because of an absolute lack of heat and CO2.
To quote your famous Prez Bush (the short one), when it came to getting American hands on additional carbon-rich gas and in a message to those ‘applying heat’ at the time, “Bring it on!” Yup, that’s what he said. I saw it during intermission. Well, if you do, you’ll get a rousing (if somewhat Labatt’s-addled) toothless hockey stick cheer from the Blank Spot.
[This comment has been brought to you by the Mackenzie brothers, Bob and Doug. Terms and conditions apply]
NASA just reported they see AGW in Arctic ocean phytoplankton blooms.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/08jun_arcticbloom/
And of course it is due to AGW…until you actually read the entire article.
I hadn’t realized the northeast had grown so much. I never felt the part of Ohio I grew up in belonged to the midwest, but is it now part of the mideast?
This is silly. There is a range of temperature that bacteria can thrive, above which they die, below which they.are dormant. How much of the earth is already above the maximum temperature these CO2/methane spewing microbes live. I would bet the bacteria have more mass than humans, and probably create more GHGs than we do.
If the air heats up by 20 degrees, ain’t gonna be nobody left to worry about the additional carbon release.
Is there any rational person who actually believes the planet is going to warm up by 10 to 20 degrees?
When I first heard of GW it was that we would reach a tipping point where the temp rise from CO2 would heat the tundra and cause it to release CO2 thus leading to more warming…My question at the time is how would we know that natural warming wasn’t already heating the tundra and this was responsible for the increased atmospheric CO2.
Now we know that CO2 is a lagging indicator.
It seems to have escaped the author’s notice but it has been stable for 17 years and cooling for 11 years. When it it gong to heat the soil ?
Who paid for this useless “research”. Therein lies the problem.
CO2=heat=WV=more heat=more CO2=more heat=more wv=more heat=less snow=more heat=more CO2=more heat=methane release=more heat=lather=rinse=repeat…
With all these positive feedbacks why again hasn’t the earth simply cooked itself? All it would take to get it started would be for an elephant to fart.
oh…”and clouds are probably positive feedback as well”….Somewhere there has to be a negative feedback to counter the positive, right?
I think its a positive FEEDBAG, cause a lot of these guys are getting fat feeding at the trough of wasted taxpayer money for funding
“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.”
D’oh!!
I grew up in rural Wisconsin, surrounded by farms of rich black topsoil. This is produced by decaying vegetable matter (d’oh again). Decaying vegetable matter produces CO2, which eventually itself decays into its constituent elements. If you take a bucket of this stuff and heat it, of course CO2 will be driven off. Big deal. Next question?
Another point, of course, is that Wisconsin temperatures range from around zero F in winter to over 80 F in summer, and presumably the topsoil temps follow. But of course in summer, the warming-induced CO2 emissions are eagerly taken in by the corn, peas, soybeans, dandelions, lawns, trees, pastures, and whatnot. This paper seems really profoundly idiotic.
Anthropogenic emissions have very little effect on this process that has been going on for millions of years. These are natural emissions and do not contribute to a positive feedback leading to “run away global warming”. Think about where and how fast all that CO2 from our western states forest fires is going.
@garymount quotes:
“Drier summers in the Lower Mainland will require communities to find new ways to conserve water in the coming decades, says a major new study on climate change adaptation released Monday.”
+++++++++
The water quantity available to Vancouver is so large and so pure that the cost in town is approximately the cost of maintaining the pipes. The idea of increasing the more than 180 days of rain as a looming ‘shortage’ makes me wonder who wrote this. The stupid is soaking in somewhere.
UoW, it’s Waterloo that has a ground water supply, not Vancouver!
another butterfly flaps its wings in the forest…
Ah – but BURYING CO2 under pressure, as the British government is determined to make a condition of any new fossil-fuelled power stations, is bound to work, isn’t it..?
What could possibly go wrong..?
what other gases are released and at what rates? The readiness of grant funding for this project and the eagerness to publish its hyperbolic scaremongering and dishonest conclusions should cause great weariness and immense concern for all rational thinkers.
Some aspirant Canadian from England was trying to get the name on record from a local who spelled it out for him: “‘C’, eh? ‘N’, eh? ‘D’, eh?” and not used to the local accent he wrote CANADA. Tourist!
The story I like is, a Portuguese explorer travelled from upstate NY to present day Canada, was asked on his return,
“What was there?”
He replied, “Que nada”.