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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Jack says:
August 2, 2012 at 2:46 pm
The 2011 Iceland volcano, Grimsvotn, was reported to have released more CO2 in the first few days than all fossil fuels used ever. How was the alleged equlibrium affected then and with the continued volcanic eruption?
Maybe the human emissions of one day… All CO2 from volcanoes or volcanic fields long after the last eruption are estimated at 1% of the human emissions. Even the largest eruption of the past century, the Pinatubo, did show a dip in CO2 increase, as the cooling absorbed -temporarely- more CO2 in the oceans (and vegetation, by light scattering) than the amount of CO2 released…
Ron says:
August 2, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Why is it that every single press release from these goombas reads as if written by the same person? Or is that just me?
_______________________________
No it is not you.
Stan Greenburg, husband of Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct) has a multiyear contract do to PR for Global Warming. Somewhere I have some old links.
AHHhh here is a new one: Stan Greenberg … a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming. from a Harvard University Program on Survey Research no less, titled “”Learning about Bold Leadership: In the trenches with Clinton, Mandela, Blair, Barak and de Lozada” with Stan Greenberg’
GEE, now we know where all those horrible biased polls come from too.
I know that carbon is especially sticky to oxygen, but is it possible that there are natural ways of separating the two of which we are not aware? I mean our scientists are really smart people, but clearly they don’t know everything else nothing new would ever be discovered. Just saying…
Gail Combs says:
August 2, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Land for agriculture came into use for about 6000 years and may be responsible for the slight increase of CO2 and CH4 over the Holocene, while temperature in average was slightly cooling. Don’t forget the population explosion since these ancient times and while the West reforested, the South destroyed far more (mostly to feed the West…). In general the estimates are far more releases for land use changes than sinks. I don’t use them in my calculations, as the estimates are far too unsure, compared to fossil fuel use, which are based on sales…
-Hmm…. models show! How come they didn’t show that the planet was taking up half of the CO2?
-How can some say that the takep-up of CO2 has slowed in certain parts of the world if they didn’t know it was happening until today?
– Why does the good news of these folks get twisted around to be a disaster waiting to happen?
-Do they now, logically, reduce their models calcs of how much CO2 is going to be in the atmosphere by 2100?
-Do they now reduce projected temps by half?
– Wouldn’t models shows that if the earth cooled that the oceans would take up more than half?
Even accepting the main claim of human responsibility for CO2 rise, there is another way of looking at all this. Since carbon is the basis of life, the size of the biosphere is more or less determined by the amount of carbon in it. Many millions of years ago an accident of nature caused a significant fraction of the biosphere carbon to become sequestered (locked up and made unavailable) thereby greatly diminishing the fecundity of life on earth (a way out suggestion – could this be the reason or a factor in the demise of the dinosaurs. No I dont suggest it seriously but it is an interesting idea to speculate on). Since then the vibrancy and extent of life on earth has remained diminished. What man is now doing is to slowly and gradually reverse that accident returning the carbon that used to be in the biosphere back to where it belongs and in the process returning the biosphere to its original fecundity and glory.
I would have thought the environmentalists would be rejoicing. I will stick my meck out and make a prediction. Long after we have found real viable alternative energy sources which are not based on chemical energy a time will come when environmentalists will start advocating that we burn more fossil fuel simply to return the carbon to the biosphere so as to enhance plant growth. Its probably a necessity anyway if we are to keep feeding the words population.
So, basically, just a variation on “return with a VENGEANCE!” scare-mongering. Got it.
I guess the plastic cacti are working
My chemistry is extremely rusty, so, I have a some questions. First, CO2 reacts with water to yield carbonic acid (H2CO3), which is however, unstable in the presence of water. It reverts to CO2 and water. The oceans also happen to carry a whopping load of dissolved calcium bicarbonate, which IIRC should act as a buffering agent as regards pH change and should also react with CO2 to yield CaCO3. Since the marine Calcite Compensation Depth (CCD) is something like 3,500 m, would that not mean that at least some of the CO2 is being precipitated out as flocculent CaCO3 in the oceans down to the CCD?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 2, 2012 at 1:33 pm
It seems to me that you did not take in anything from Prof. Murray Salby’s presentation. Perhaps you did not watch it.
Not read all the comments here but…
Here is a testable experiment.
Take a small body of water, a bottle perhaps, at standard temperature and pressure and the current CO2 levels in the atmosphere above it.
Double the CO2 levels in this enclosed system an see what happens.
Does the CO2 in the atmosphere level double? I doubt it will.
DaveE.
“… When the time comes that these carbon sinks are no longer taking up carbon, there is going to be a big price to pay.”
Wow. The deciples never cease to amaze me.
There is little doubt that rainforests etc have expanded in the past in response to warming – mainly because the equatorial climate belt gets larger. However, I have difficulty understanding how this is going to happen with the current aforestation that is occurring.
Fred Allen says:
August 2, 2012 at 8:19 am
Yet, carbon sinks have doubled their intake of CO2 in general, or just doubled the intake of human emitted CO2? Smart sinks?
Not smart,Fred,just money hungry. A carbon sink gives two rat’s patooties about where the CO2 comes from.It is ALL chemically the same.Or didn’t our esteemed “scientists” get by grade 4 chem???
The absorption of Carbon by plants, oceans and soils shows no sign of slowing down. If anything it is even accelerating.
Total human emission last year were 9.1 billion tons Carbon and the CO2 content of the atmosphere only increased 1.85 ppm (or 4.0 billion tons Carbon). [These numbers do vary some however from source to source and day to day.
The absorption amount was the highest recorded in history and it appears to be increasing at an exponential rate.
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/424/co2absorpppm17502011.png
It is more likely to be a function of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere above the equilbrium level of 275 ppm (1.8% per year of the excess seems to work), than it is related to how much we put into the atmosphere each year but no climate scientist wants to challenge the prevailing doom scenario that it will eventually decline. We can’t have any “no doom” scenarios published.
I don’t think much of what happens on plant earth has or will have much of an impact on long term climate change… other than the clouds. It may affect weather, but not the climate. Henrik Svensmark has given the world a thoroughly convincing theory of what changes earth’s climate. His theory is backed by both empirical evidence and experiment. His theory has been further strengthened by the CLOUD experiment at CERN led by Dr Jasper Kirkby. The theory explains nicely the changes in past climate. The evidence of 30 years of satellite data also provides convincing short term evidence to support his theory. It seems more than likely that earth’s climate is controlled by galactic cosmic rays reaching earth’s atmosphere, vital to cloud formation. The solar magnetic activity influences the amount of cosmic rays reaching earth’s atmosphere. More clouds means cooler temperatures and vice versa. The clouds are not a consequence of climate. It is the climate that is as a consequence of clouds.
Ocean activity, vegetative growth, carbon dioxide, etc etc etc can vary as much as they want. But they are not a basis for climate change theory in the same manner as Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory. In fact, Henrik Svensmark’s latest published paper entitled “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”, a culmination of years of effort, shows how the variable frequency of stellar explosions not far from our planet has ruled over the changing fortunes of living things throughout the past half billion years.
It is time for scientists to take a reality check and delve into the most convincing theory behind climate change that has ever been put forward.
I wonder how they think all that chalk, limestone, coal, oil and gas got there in the first place.
Was it brought by Father Christmas, or by the Tooth Fairy?
If the authors want discuss equilibrium, fine. Perhaps they would like to consider how oceans became supersaturated with Calcium ions that precipitates as chalk, limestone, coral, or in the carbonates forming exoskeletons of other marine life-forms.
A large company that lost 50% of it’s revenues every year to an unknown ‘sink’ would go bankrupt, and the directors would likely end up having to explain themselves in court.
Droughts (according to some models) “might” become the norm & we can relax because there will be less need for CO2 sinks, seeing how ~20% of CO2 soil respiration occurs in the temperate climes. As a fall-back measure anthropogenic paving could always be accelerated to put a bigger dent in the ~67% CO2 soil respiration occurring in the tropics. I say don’t mess with the boreal landscaping’s ~12% CO2 soil respiration until further environmental impact consensus.
“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.
Mental midgetry aside, why can they not accept that if a factor is changing less than they claim or assume, and nothing is happening, maybe that factor is not the cause. They are trying to claim the factor must be even more powerful than they thought as “climate change” is happening even though the planet is absorbing so much CO2. Of course, let’s not forget that they have a very overblown idea of the effect or importance of man’s emissions.
When investigating a murder, if one ignores everything in the room but the moth on the drapes, then one can only conclude, however unlikely, that the moth is the murderer. Yep, that’s climate science!
It’s OK, the model is still intact if we just add another epicycle or two.
Anthropomorphism:
A more accurate anthropomorphism is:
Only when one recognizes that, can the species’ survival in its struggle against nature be assured. Why help that which would destroy you? Only when tamed is Nature of any use to us.
Don’t have time to comment much, but I see Ferdinand Englebeen is pushing his fanciful notions of the carbon cycle again, which completely contradict causality and nearly every other established principle of physics.
All anyone needs to know about atmospheric CO2 concentration is contained in this plot. The rate of change is directly proportional to temperature anomaly relative to a baseline established by the upflow and downflow of ocean currents and perhaps other processes. To predict CO2 concentration at any time since modern, reliable measurements began in 1958, all you have to do is integrate the scaled temperature anomaly. Human inputs are completely superfluous in this era beyond any doubt, and likely in any other era by extension.
What this means is that the current state of the Earth’s climate system establishes the equilibrium level of CO2 to which the system converges, and human inputs are rapidly removed via numerous sequestration mechanisms which are poorly quantified. It is a system which is analogous to the differential equation
dCO2/dt = (CO2eq – CO2)/tau + a*H
where H is human input, a is the fraction which remains in the atmosphere after the oceans take their share, and tau is a relatively fast time constant. In such a system, sensitivity to H is low, and the CO2 level tracks CO2eq, which is in turn set by temperature, ocean currents, and other processes.This plot by itself disqualifies any other interpretation.
I will have little time to look back at this thread before it goes stale, so let me say preemptively, in case Ferdinand ripostes, that we have already argued this out extensively on other threads. I am right, and he is wrong.
So, they didn’t expect for carbon uptake to change, but they are sure it can’t continue. Riiiggghhhhttttt.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 2, 2012 at 2:08 pm
The point is that the rest of the dissociation is a equilibrium reaction which gives more H+ at the end, which pushes the equilibria back to free CO2. The net effect is that for a 100% increase in pCO2(atm) and thus pCO2(aq) – according to Henry’s Law, the conversion rate to (bi)carbonate is only 10%, the buffer factor for a weak buffering solution.
———————————
Ferdinand, guess how you make a Ca(HCO3)2 (calcium bicarbonate) solution? Ca(HCO3)2 isnt stable as a solid at room temperature so you dont make it by adding solid Ca(HCO3)2 to water. Turns the way to make it is by bubbling CO2 into a CaCO3 slurry. CaCO3, not being very water soluble (although Ca bicarbonate is extremely soluble in water at ~160g/liter) is readily dissolved in just a few minutes by bubbling CO2 to make your Ca(HCO3)2 solution. Its the same way stalagmites and stalagtites are made in caves. Rain, enriched in CO2 disolves the CaCO3 minerals in the soil and redeposits them in the cave when the water dries out and the Ca(HCO3)2 turns back iknto CaCO3 and water vapor and CO2 gas. Also, guses what the pH of Ca bicarbonate solution is? Ph = 8.2. Imagine that, pretty much the same pH as the ocean.which shouldn’t be too surprising as it is the buffer of the ocean. Any guess as to how much CaCO3 (limestone) there is in the world? Orders of magnitude more than there is CO2 which could be produced by burning all the known fossil fuels on the planet.You can be quaranteed that at equilibrium, if ALL of the CO2 (inclulding the as of yet unburnt fossil fuels in the ground) the pH of the ocean would still be >7, ie basic. (Note I said at equilibrium, you could of course turn parts of it acidic for short periods of time in a non equilibrium state).
Also, because the ocean is buffered, the pH remains nearly constant at equilibrium. Thus as more CO2 is dissolves into the ocean the CO3– concentration increases! Great for the shell producing sea animals. This is shown by the equilibrium equation Ka = [H][CO3]/[HCO3] => Ka/[H]= [CO3]/[HCO3]. Since pH is constant, Ka/[H] is a constant and therefore, as [HCO3] increases due to higher CO2 in the air, [CO3–] in the ocean also must increase. If it ever starts looking like the atmospheric CO2 is to high and leads to non equilibrium pH problems, can always spread around tons of crushed limestone pebbles on shallow sensitive areas of the ocean and that should take care of that. Way less expensive than multi trillion dollar taxes and fees being proposed by the CAGW types.