Readers may recall these WUWT stories: Earth’s biosphere booming, California’s giant redwoods inconveniently respond to increased carbon dioxide, and Forget deforestation: The world’s woodland is getting denser and change could help combat climate change. NASA satellite imagery pointed this out long ago.
Now confirmation from another source: From the University of Colorado at Boulder
Earth absorbing more carbon, even as CO2 emissions rise, says CU-Boulder-led study
Planet’s carbon uptake doubles in past 50 years, researchers ponder how long trend can continue
Despite sharp increases in carbon dioxide emissions by humans in recent decades that are warming the planet, Earth’s vegetation and oceans continue to soak up about half of them, according to a surprising new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The study, led by CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Ashley Ballantyne, looked at global CO2 emissions reports from the past 50 years and compared them with rising levels of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere during that time, primarily because of fossil fuel burning. The results showed that while CO2 emissions had quadrupled, natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years, lessening the warming impacts on Earth’s climate.
“What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ballantyne. “How long this will continue, we don’t know.”
A paper on the subject will be published in the Aug. 2 issue of Nature. Co-authors on the study include CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, CU-Boulder doctoral student Caroline Alden and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists John Miller and Pieter Tans. Miller also is a research associate at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
According to Alden, the trend of sinks gulping atmospheric carbon cannot continue indefinitely. “It’s not a question of whether or not natural sinks will slow their uptake of carbon, but when,” she said.
“We’re already seeing climate change happen despite the fact that only half of fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere while the other half is drawn down by the land biosphere and oceans,” Alden said. “If natural sinks saturate as models predict, the impact of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 will double.”
Ballantyne said recent studies by others have suggested carbon sinks were declining in some areas of the globe, including parts of the Southern Hemisphere and portions of the world’s oceans. But the new Nature study showed global CO2 uptake by Earth’s sinks essentially doubled from 1960 to 2010, although increased variations from year-to-year and decade-to-decade suggests some instability in the global carbon cycle, he said.
White, who directs CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, likened the increased pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere to a car going full throttle. “The faster we go, the more our car starts to shake and rattle,” he said. “If we drive 100 miles per hour, it is going to shake and rattle a lot more because there is a lot more instability, so it’s probably time to back off the accelerator,” he said. “The same is true with CO2 emissions.”
The atmospheric CO2 levels were measured at 40 remote sites around the world by researchers from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., including stations at the South Pole and on the Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii.
Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere primarily by fossil fuel combustion and by forest fires and some natural processes, said Ballantyne. “When carbon sinks become carbon sources, it will be a very critical time for Earth,” said Ballantyne. “We don’t see any evidence of that yet, but it’s certainly something we should be looking for.”
“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
Despite the enormous uptake of carbon by the planet, CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed from about 280 parts per million just prior to the Industrial Revolution to about 394 parts per million today, and the rate of increase is speeding up. The global average of atmospheric CO2 is expected to reach 400 ppm by 2016, according to scientists.
The team used several global CO2 emissions reports for the Nature study, including one by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. They concluded that about 350 billion tons of carbon — the equivalent of roughly 1 trillion tons of CO2 — had been emitted as a result of fossil fuel burning and land use changes from 1959 to 2010, with just over half moving into sinks on land or in the oceans.
According to the study, the scientists observed decreased CO2 uptake by Earth’s land and oceans in the 1990s, followed by increased CO2 sequestering by the planet from 2000 to 2010. “Seeing such variation from decade to decade tells us that we need to observe Earth’s carbon cycle for significantly longer periods in order to help us understand what is occurring,” said Ballantyne.
Scientists also are concerned about the increasing uptake of CO2 by the world’s oceans, which is making them more acidic. Dissolved CO2 changes seawater chemistry by forming carbonic acid that is known to damage coral, the fundamental structure of coral reef ecosystems that harbor 25 percent of the world’s fish species.
The study was funded by the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation and NOAA.
A total of 33.6 billion tons of CO2 were emitted globally in 2010, climbing to 34.8 billion tons in 2011, according to the International Energy Agency. Federal budget cuts to U.S. carbon cycle research are making it more difficult to measure and understand both natural and human influences on the carbon cycle, according to the research team.
“The good news is that today, nature is helping us out,” said White also a professor in CU’s geological sciences department. “The bad news is that none of us think nature is going to keep helping us out indefinitely. When the time comes that these carbon sinks are no longer taking up carbon, there is going to be a big price to pay.”
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“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
What would Tans call the chalk hills of shells of plankton/diatoms if not that they are a carbon sink? These diatoms add a large percentage of the oxygen to the atmosphere and in doing so sequester carbon in their shells which then sink to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps NOAA should have people get out a little and understand nature.
The problem with the early world is that nature got too good at removing CO2 from the atmosphere and plants that used it for food suddenly found there was insufficient CO2.
Although admitting that some CO2 will be taken up by increasing vegetation,
I think the real chemistry for “carbon sinking” is a bit different.
Remember there are giga tons and giga tons of carbonate dissolved in the oceans, mostly as bicarbonate.
In the past, due to warming, we had
(more) heat + HCO3- => CO2 (g) + OH- (outgassing)
I calculate that overall warming started just about seriously when regular CO2 monitoring began. (Manoa Loa)
Most recently, due to cooling, since 1995 (as viewed by energy input: maxima)
or since ca. 1998 (as viewed by energy out put from earth: means)
the situation will change:
(more) cold + CO2 + 2H2O => HCO3- + H3O+
The carbon dioxide is simply sinking (=dissolving) in the oceans.
To prove that this is true watch the NOAA station (Burrow, Barrow?) that is monitoring CO2 in ALASKA: the CO2 has been flat for quite some time.
Note my results for Anchorage, in the tables, here
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
it is beginning to look a bit frightening is it not?
A paper referenced by WUWT
So Dinosaurs Could Fly ! – Part I
Posted on June 2, 2012 by Anthony Watts
estimated sequestered CO2 in limestone at 2.9E20 kg which is 290 thousand trillion tons.
At 35 billion tons per year, the earth has already sequestered 8 million years worth of anthropogenic CO2.
I won’t bother to go into the amount which is sequestered in tar, oil and gas deposits since that estimated number seems to be increasing almost daily
From the post:
“The good news is that today, nature is helping us out,” said White also a professor in CU’s geological sciences department. “The bad news is that none of us think nature is going to keep helping us out indefinitely. When the time comes that these carbon sinks are no longer taking up carbon, there is going to be a big price to pay.”
Of the three quoted sentences I agree with the first and third, especially the third. IF photosynthesis stops, we are in so much trouble that I would not worry about whether or not limestone deposition continued.
Surely part of this “Carbon Sink” process is how we got oil and gas buried deep underground in the first place!
Billions of marine micro-organisms take carbon from the atmosphere/ocean to make their bodies and then die, sink to the bottom of the ocean, get covered by sediments and in a “few” million years, OIL!! (We did this at junior school! Anyone remember the Carbon Cycle?)
Unless someone goes and disturbs these deep sea sediments I’d guess that we’ve got a near infinite sink capability….
Just think of it as laying down future reserves….
Not quite new !
Wolf Knorr (Bristol UK) published a paper : (7 Nov. 2009).
Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?
Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.
The answer is NO. The airborne fraction is the same from at least 1850…
Sounds to me like we might be saving our planet’s O2 producing vegetation and our primary food sources by driving bigger SUVs and trucks as well as staving off the coming glaciation! Think I’ll change our house over from propane to coal heating, probably cheaper too.
Observations that disagree with computer models are not helpful.
Computer models all agree that the warming oceans sequester less CO2. It is obvious to the most expert ecologist that:
1. The warming land harms plant growth.
2.
3. The warming land increases methane-belching insect populations.
4. The warming ocean causes more intense or more frequent cyclones, which release CO2 from the oceans.
This is all based on peer-reviewed, consensus-based cluster modeling.
None of the computer model ‘observational data’ agrees with in-the-field instrument-based observations. Therefore, it is clear that the field observations are wrong and require adjustments.
QED
/sarc
For a better perspective of Carbon Dioxide Sources and Carbon Dioxide Sinks this key peer-reviewed, and never really refuted, scientific paper puts things in perspective. It reveals that the Western Hemisphere sequesters more than all the CO2 that Nature or Man emits combined on those continents.
If Eurasia emits net CO2, its Eurasia’s problem not ours.
The Greens at WWF, Sierrra Club, UCS, yadda, yadda should go hector them and and stop wasting our time. Our bio-sequestration has finished the “work” these eco-know-nothings wanted, long before they even supposedly recognized a need to do anything. That’s waht happens when you do planned flora & fauna husbandry, growing plants for food, fiber, lumber, paper and forage.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/282/5388/442.abstract
I agree with Henry P on this issue.
Temperature linked variation in the net absorption activity of the oceans dwarfs every other aspect of the carbon cycle.
The variability of the sea surface temperatures on mutidecadal and centennial timescales is only now becoming appreciated.
The atmospheric CO2 effects of such variability have not thus far been fully incorporated into descriptions of the carbon cycle.
alcheson says:
August 2, 2012 at 8:31 am
Mathematically
If X = mans CO2 output and Y = natures CO2 output and Z= natures CO2 sinks
then net rise in CO2 = X +Y-Z
since warmists imply that all the increase in CO2 is due to man and the world would be at equilibrium if not for man, then Y =Z.
Now if X increases to at most only .05 of Y, but Z doubles, then
.CO2 concentratiopn change -> 05Y +Y -2Z => 1.05Y – 2Y = -.95Y. CO2 would be dropping fast!
But as they’ve told you Z has increased by X/2 and therefore CO2 increases at a rate of ~X/2.
Since the major sink is absorption by the oceans which is governed by Henry’s Law you’d expect CO2 absorption proportionally with the increase in CO2. This will not continue if the water temperature goes up, for the ocean the concentration dissolved in equilibrium with the atmosphere will halve for a 16 K increase in temperature.
The new Greenpeace slogan:
Cut back on your CO2 emissions and kill a tree!
You know it makes sense…
Starting from false premises the “researchers” have built a worse-than-Rube-Goldberg climate model, searched unceasingly for model runs that “proved” they were right, and then the universe refuses to behave. It’s enough to make one lie on the floor and kick ones feet while screaming.
Tomorrow’s Fishwrap of Record newspaper below the fold story:
“NYC Mayor Bloomberg repeals his ban on super size cups used for CO2 Big Gulps … upholds restriction on hospital issued baby formula citing importance of all available empty baby bottles for use as CO2 sinks … reassures public his drastic measures will stop sea from rising & acidic water won’t get into elevator shafts eating the cables … “
We keep reading these obvious and repetitive findings, often contradictory to the conclusion, cloaked in alarmist jargon. One begins to wonder if these scientists are really as intellectually mundane as they appear.
He he he he !!!
Stay focused! What are they really saying and why do they express themseves as they do?
They admit 1. That there is an unbalance in the earth carbon sinks and that there are
2 “some natural sources and 3 They DONT relate the level of co2 in the atmosfhere to temperature it self. They are simply trying to create another interpretaion af what Murry Salby discovered and the pure “hit the bullshit botton” is this::
“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
Well you know temperature itself does that and when theese “scientists” can calculate at what temperature the global sinks is in “eqilibrium” they are wecome , because they dont have a clue what they are talkning about or how the “natural processes work” or how much of the co2 increase comes from humans or natural. skeight “unbalance” in the natural corbon sinks
This is what they are aware ofand trying to get around but doesnt sucëed:
Just a reminder CIRES is involved in USGCRP 2012-2021 report on using education and the social sciences and communication to redesign the American economy anyway, whatever the temps. I suspect that means our students and the average citizen listening to the nightly news will hear lots more about “shaking and rattling” and “pushed out of equilibrium.”
The scientific illiteracy and fallacies being officially encouraged and mandated via Common Core will help spread the sense of popular alarm. I can also guarantee none of you will like the math activities being developed for the Common Core by the Freudenthal Institute which has relocated there. I do not think there are very many scientists on board with Realistic Mathematics and its accessible to all emphasis.
The 3 most prevalent points you read in all the blueprints I have read on restructuring the economy around sustainability and educating for sustainability as a core component of getting the US ready for our designed new future always are these:
1) the Earth’s climate is a closed system;
2) nature wants to be in equilibrium and policies must aid that be they economic or climate or biodiversity (that one always seems to forget that wayward meteor); and
3) the 2nd law of thermodynamics (usually mentioned just like that).
Doesn’t it make you feel good to know those are the foundations for gutting the transmission of knowledge and centrally planning a society and an economy and monitoring and restricting individual behaviors?
From this post:
“The study, led by CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Ashley Ballantyne, looked at global CO2 emissions reports from the past 50 years and compared them with rising levels of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere during that time, primarily because of fossil fuel burning. The results showed that while CO2 emissions had quadrupled, natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years, lessening the warming impacts on Earth’s climate. ”
Since anthropogenic CO2 is only a few percent of the carbon cycle, if the carbon sinks had doubled their uptake, they would have cleansed the atmosphere of CO2 in fairly short order. If Ballantyne meant sinks that sequester only anthropogenic CO2 , I would be very interested in the nature of those sinks and the mechanism by which they identify anthropogenic CO2. My first reaction is that this “postdoctoral researcher” either lacks sufficient language skills to express thoughts or lacks the cognitive ability to place those thoughts in a broader perspective.
Of course it is possible that Ballantyne was taken out of context by whoever put the post on the university web site. I, however, would think that anyone would want to proofread a story before it was published.
They lost me right there. Humans are tagged with about 3% of the total emissions and there is no evidence of those human CO2 emissions actually causing any warming.
Papers that start off with deliberately misleading statements like the above should not make it past the editor’s wastepaper basket. Universities that encourage this type of deceit should have their tax payer funds cut off and be publicly pilloried by the rest of the scientific community.
I am really getting sick and tired of “Post-Normal” aka propaganda pseudo-science. One has no way of knowing how badly the paper, methods and data have been corrupted by the very evident political bias.
They don’t know how the sinks work but they are obsessed with the belief that the sinks are going to fail real soon now. This is an irrational industry that would not exist without government handouts.
“The bad news is that none of us think…” That sums it up nicely!
1 trillion tons over 50 years sounds like a lot, but every year 0.75 trillion tons (750 Gt) are released into the atmosphere (and re-absorbed by carbon sinks) from natural sources.
Someday, I’d like to have a serious discussion on this topic.
Jim G says:
August 2, 2012 at 9:10 am
Sounds to me like we might be saving our planet’s O2 producing vegetation and our primary food sources by driving bigger SUVs and trucks as well as staving off the coming glaciation! …
__________________________________
That deserves a bumper sticker
SAVE the PLANTS: BURN COAL
These Boulder people are obviously hell-bent on getting Californian electricity prices. How many alarmist quotes can they cram into a press release. It diminishes my opinion of todays institutionalized science another notch. Fire them all. You can’t afford them anyway, and they’re not only useless, they’re harmful.
speaking from Germany… another hellhole populated by crazy warmist parasites, I know…
he said. “If we drive 100 miles per hour, it is going to shake and rattle a lot more because there is a lot more instability
I wonder what sort of junker this guy drives… I’d recommend checking the tire pressures, getting the wheels balanced, and check for separated belts in the tires.