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.”
Where does this notion of the sinks “saturating” come from? The atmosphere is the smallest of the main carbon pools. You could think of the system of carbon pools as a set of communicating vessels, with the atmosphere being the smallest (thinnest) of them by a large margin. The amount being added through fossil fuel combustion is rather minuscule in comparison with the total in the system. The leveling out of these vessels may be a bit delayed, but you can be sure that most of whatever you add to the atmosphere will eventually have to move to the other, much larger pools (barring some very large increase in ocean temperatures). At current or similar temperatures, the oceans and the biosphere will continue to take most of the extra CO2 we add to the atmosphere. We couldn’t “saturate” them even if we wanted to. Does the author suppose that plants are scheming to go on a diet or a hunger strike of some kind? He seems to be making a big effort to spin things in the most alarmist way possible: Oh, yes, our friends the plants and the oceans are “helping us out” but if one day they get “fed up….”
Yes, the oceans and the biosphere are taking more CO2 from the atmosphere than before, simply because there is more of it available. And yes, they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And there is nothing particularly surprising about any of this.
Henry@Stephen Fisher Wilde
Thx for ur comment earlier. What do you think of my lastest tables and what I conclude from them? Warm rgrds. H
Stephen Wilde says:
August 2, 2012 at 9:17 am
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….
_____________________________
Do not forget the work of Fred H. Haynie a Retired Environmental Scientist who worked for the EPA. This is his detailed CO2 data analysis @ur momisugly http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf
He finds evidence of the periodic nature of CO2 sequestering.
Slide 54 shows a graph of the SST and CO2 relationship.
Slides 28 – 34
Slide 42:
And slide 36 :
I figure Hayne’s work was a nice break allowing the cleansing of the palette after reading the above nonscience tripe.
OT – Is it just me? I can’t view http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2012rel3-global-mean-sea-level-time-series-seasonal-signals-retained anymore. It now says that I am not authorized.
So, U of C is a party school or what?
Unless otherwise stated, which I didn’t see, it would be darn tough to have monitored the world’s carbon sinks for the period. So I assume that this result is based on modeling.
GIGO fed into the PR system for announcing ‘new consensus science’ and voila! We are treated to an announcement that new research insists that A) Carbon sinks have doubled their uptake of CO2. B) Carbon sinks have saturation points which only man can cause.
How odd, if there is a seriously major carbon sink, (aka oceans), that doubled it’s uptake of CO2 over the last half century, I would seriously consider this as proof that the oceans were cooling.
So my takeaway from this research announcement (besides there must’ve been a lot of alcohol involved) is that there is NO AGW/CAGW because the oceans are definitively cooling in order to take up twice the CO2, not warming.
Or, I suspect that the real reason for this PR release of research is that they’re constructing a priest hole, also known as an escape hole.
“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.”
A new warmie meme! Gaia as “exasperated altruist”…
Phil. says:
August 2, 2012 at 9:18 am
But as they’ve told you Z has increased by X/2 and therefore CO2 increases at a rate of ~X/2.
Oh, then instead of natural sources doubling their uptake as the headline claims, they actually increased their uptake by about 1% in order to absorb 50% of the relatively small amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by man. Thus they would lead us to believe then that our earth is SOOOOO close to the edge, that a mere 1% increase in CO2 uptake is going to overload the system.
Mike M says:
August 2, 2012 at 10:26 am
OT – Is it just me? [link snipped] It now says that I am not authorized.
I got the same “Access Denied” message, Mike — it may just be an artifact. Clicking one of the links on the left will get you in through the back door.
If the capacity was anywhere near ‘saturated’ we wouldn’t see as dramatic a reduction in CO2 occur every summer mainly due I suppose from the NH vegetation coverage, (cooling SH ocean too a little ?). http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.png
For the other half of the year that chart strikes me every time I look at it – humans can only be responsible for ~3% of that high rate of increasing CO2 and 3% is likely a gross exaggeration as it is.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 2, 2012 at 7:10 am
The above scenario is consistent with ocean temperature changes being in control of CO2 amounts in the air and not human emissions.
Furthermore the above extract appears inconsistent with:
“natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years”
So which is it:
i) A decrease in uptake up to 2000 then a rise in uptake since then
or
ii) A doubling of uptake over the past 50 years.
I agree that the explanation is not very clear, but what happened in reality, is that the NET natural sinks doubled their uptake, in the same period that human emissions doubled. The increase of the net uptake by biosphere and oceans was slightly less in the ’90s and more since 2000, but in all cases, nature was a net sink for CO2, not a source. Temperature only regulates the sink rate around halve of the human emissions. That is all… See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
Fred Allen says:
August 2, 2012 at 8:19 am
So human emissions have quadrupled in the last 50 years and human emissions account for less than 4% of the total CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Yet, carbon sinks have doubled their intake of CO2 in general, or just doubled the intake of human emitted CO2? Smart sinks?
This is such a common arror against all logic under many sceptics…
True that humans emit only 3% of the natural emissions. But the natural carbon cycle is not only emissions, it is also sinks: and humans provide 0% of the natural sinks. Thus all what humans emit is additional and what nature emits is more than compensated by natural sinks. Against 97% natural emissions stands 98.5% natural sinks…
What would greenhouse producers say to all this CO2 knicker twisting? Maybe the issue here is that scientists don’t know how to make a buck with CO2. Or with anything else for that matter. Maybe we should require scientists to spend 3 years working in private industry actually trying to make money prior to their placement in the Ivory Tower.
“What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”
If I remember by high school biology correctly, the “equilibrium” of the “global carbon system” includes sequestration of CO2 in organic matter and its subsequent conversion to hydrocarbon stocks. Seems like the system is working the way it is supposed to. Increasing use of the hydrocarbon stocks leads to greater conversion to organic matter just as it did in the past when CO2 was higher, and organic matter covered more of the planet. Is he saying that the process of converting organic matter to hydrocarbon stocks is out of whack? What is his evidence?
Gail Combs says:
August 2, 2012 at 10:26 am
Temperature linked variation in the net absorption activity of the oceans dwarfs every other aspect of the carbon cycle….
////
But if you look at the changes in CO2 during the glacial/interglacial cycles of the last 400,000 years or so, what you see is that very large changes in temperature (in the order of about 8 deg C) are needed to produce a mere 90 ppm increase or decrease. So the very modest warming that has occurred since the canonical pre-industrial 280 ppm could not possibly be the main cause of the increase to current levels. It also seems to me that if the net result is that half of our emissions are accumulating, then those emissions have to be the main reason for the increase because, without them, the concentration would not only fail to increase, but would actually start decreasing. Unless I am missing something.
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!
Real figures are:
net rise in CO2 = X +Y-Z
where the net rise is currently ~4 GtC/year and X ~8 GtC/year thus:
4 = 8 + Y – Z
or
Y-Z = -4 GtC/year.
Thus the natural sinks were 4 GtC higher than the natural sources in the past year.
In 1960, the figures were 1 GtC sink capacity and 2 GtC emissions per year, see the forementioned link to the emissions/increase/sink rates over the past 50 years.
Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere primarily by fossil fuel combustion and by forest fires and some natural processes, said Ballantyne.
No Ballantyne. CO² is emitted into the air primarily by natural processes 97% primarily. Plonker. Find a new job you are useless at your current day job.
Frank says:
August 2, 2012 at 11:12 am
Not missing something, assuming too much. The evidence for past co² levels is very suspect and cannot be exact. Don’t come back with the old ‘we measure in the ice cores’. Doesn’t wash I’m afraid.
The UN/IPCC’s own figures show about 3% of CO2 is from human sources. That is less than the interannual variability. So the planet can easily handle it. The biosphere is currently starved of CO2. Thus, at current and projected concentrations, there is no downside to an increase in harmless, beneficial CO2. More is better.
ATheoK says:
August 2, 2012 at 10:31 am
Unless otherwise stated, which I didn’t see, it would be darn tough to have monitored the world’s carbon sinks for the period. So I assume that this result is based on modeling.
No, simple math: net natural sink = human emissions – increase in the atmosphere
No need to know any individual natural source or sink. But even then, these are searched for too, by using tall towers which monitor the in/out fluxes over wide areas over land.
How odd, if there is a seriously major carbon sink, (aka oceans), that doubled it’s uptake of CO2 over the last half century, I would seriously consider this as proof that the oceans were cooling.
No need for cooling: any 1°C increase or decrease in average ocean surface temperature would give an average increase or decrease of 16 microatm in pCO2 (partial pressure of the dissolved CO2 in seawater at that temperature and salt content). According to Henry’s Law, a similar change in the atmosphere of ~16 ppmv would be sufficient to bring everything back into equilibrium. But the real increase is near 100 ppmv (70 ppmv over the past 50 years of accurate measurements). Thus more CO2 is pushed into the oceans, even if the oceans should warm. But the ocean temperature does influence the sink rate…
Phil. says: @ur momisugly August 2, 2012 at 9:18 am
….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.
________________________
That is only half the story. First the overall trend is down in temperature not up since we are at the end of the holocene and the incoming solar has declined . Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes…. This is supported by the Greenland ice core data(Graph) and the
and Vostok, Antarctica Ice Core data (Graph)
Where the oceans get their heat is the other half. IR energy is not absorbed by the oceans.
graph energy absorbed by the ocean -1
graph energy absorbed by the ocean -2
Graph Solar incoming energy
Graph of energy from incoming solar vs outgoing earth IR
Couple those graphs with Fred H. Haynie’s work I mentioned above and you have CO2 concentration dependent on ocean temperature which is in turn dependent on the incoming solar energy.
NASA is finding the incoming solar energy is not constant but varies especially in the wavelengths visible and above.
Graph: Total Solar Irradiance Monitoring 1978 to present
NASA:
Solar Variability>/a>
Smokey says:
August 2, 2012 at 11:28 am
The UN/IPCC’s own figures show about 3% of CO2 is from human sources. That is less than the interannual variability.
No Smokey, humans currently emit ~8 GtC/year, the net natural sinks are ~4 GtC/year and the interannual variability in sink capacity is also ~4 GtC/year around the increase in the atmosphere, thus only halve the human emissions, which show mainly a continuous increasing increase, even despite any economical crisis.
That the interannual variability is quite small for a natural process, in my opinion is mainly due to the opposite influence of temperature variations on oceans and land vegetation uptake of CO2…
Spot the CO2 in this graph with a normal 0 – 100% x-axis. [Look close!]
Spot the CO2 at 10X the resolution of the graph above. [Still having trouble seeing it?]
Let’s increase the resolution to 100X. [Finally!]
This is what all the wild-eyed arm waving is about.
We are lucky to be living in a “Goldilocks” climate, where more CO2 makes no measurable difference in temperature. It could be much worse.
Cold arctic waters absorb CO2, warm tropical surface water releases CO2(you can see some indications of this in the AIRS satellite images http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA12339_modest.jpg). Below 200-300 Meters depth the waters are near if not below freezing. I’ve calculated that at those temperatures the cold deep waters would hold 2,000-3,000 times the entire 650 Gton carbon cycle of CO2. I had no way to calculate how much CO2 would transfer from the thermocline, to deep waters, but the surface area is approximately 70% of the Earths surface, it would have to be substantial.
Saturation of CO2 sinks? That’s what their models claim? More circular reasoning from the AGWers. Who created the models? What was their premise and their assumptions?
Saturation is based on the KNOWN response of each and every variable. How do they know when plants have exhausted their ability to colonize open ground like the Gobi or Sahara Desert or up mountain sides or open spaces between existing plants or plankton coverage on the ocean’s surface? How about the response of plant height to increasing CO2 availability? i.e. the vertical increase of carbon storage potential over a unit area, not just plant density over that unit area. Honestly, does anyone really think they actually even included such variables?
This is yet another example of a Mannian hockey stick program created to give an intended result. Prove me wrong.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
……70 ppmv over the past 50 years of accurate measurements). Thus more CO2 is pushed into the oceans, even if the oceans should warm. But the ocean temperature does influence the sink rate…
Henry says:
my question is: how much of that 70 ppm’s was due to natural warming?
I repeat my previous post: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 seriously just about 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+(=sinking)
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 there 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?