From the Oh Noes department and the Max Planck Institute comes this headline sure to cause worry worts scurrying for carbon removing water filters:
Massive amounts of charcoal enter the worlds’ oceans
Wild fire residue is washed out of the soil and transported to the sea by rivers
Wild fires turn millions of hectares of vegetation into charcoal each year. An international team of researchers led by Thorsten Dittgar from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Rudolf Jaffé from Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center in Miami has now shown that this charcoal does not remain in the soil, as previously thought. Instead, it is transported to the sea by rivers and thus enters the carbon cycle. The researchers analyzed water samples from all over the world. They demonstrated that soluble charcoal accounts for ten percent of the total amount of dissolved organic carbon.
“Most scientists thought charcoal was resistant. They thought, once it is incorporated into the soils, it would stay there,” says Rudolf Jaffé from Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center in Miami. But if that were the case, the soils would be black.” Most of the charcoal in nature is from wild fires and combustion of biomass in general. When charcoal forms it is typically deposited in the soil.“ From a chemical perspective, no one really thought it dissolves, but it does,” Jaffé says. “It doesn’t accumulate like we had for a long time believed. Rather, it is transported into wetlands and rivers, eventually making its way to the oceans.”
Thorsten Dittmar from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen focuses on carbon chemistry in the oceans. “To understand the oceans we have to understand also the processes on the land, from where the organic load enters the seas”, Dittmar says.
The international team, which also included researchers from Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Georgia, Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, the USDA Forest Service, and the University of Helsinki in Finland, had taken 174 water samples from all over the world, including rivers like the Amazon, the Congo, the Yangtze as well as Arctic sites.
Surprisingly, in any river across the world about ten percent of organic carbon that is dissolved in the water came from charcoal. With this robust relationship in hand they estimated the global flux of dissolved charcoal, based on previous scientific studies that focused on organic carbon flux. According to these estimates, about 25 million tons of dissolved charcoal is transported from land to the sea each year.
The new findings are important to better calculate the global carbon budget. This budget is a balancing act between sources that produce carbon and sinks that remove it. Detailed calculations are important to assess climatic effects and find ways to alleviate them.
Until now, researchers could only provide rough estimates of the amount of charcoal in the soil, and most of these estimates turned out to be wrong, as the total amout is determined by charcoal producing processes, like wild fires, and transport to the oceans.
According to the authors, the results imply that greater consideration must be given to carbon sequestration techniques (the process of capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide). Biochar addition to soils is one such technique. Biochar technology is based on vegetation-derived charcoal that is added to agricultural soils as a means to store carbon. Although promising in storing carbon, Jaffé points out that as more people implement biochar technology, they must take into consideration the potential dissolution of the charcoal to ensure these techniques are actually environmentally friendly.
Jaffé and Dittmar agree that there are still many unknowns when it comes to the environmental fate of charcoal, and both plan to move on to the next phase of the research. They have proven where the charcoal goes. Next, they want to answer how this happens and what the environmental consequences are. The better scientists can understand the processes and the environmental factors controlling it, the better the chance of developing strategies for carbon sequestration and help mitigate climate change.
Source: http://www.mpg.de/7112434/charcoal_oceans
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So the question is: with more charcoal in the rivers and oceans, how does this affect the albedo? Does it cause the oceans to warm faster? – Anthony
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I crossed a lot of rivers and streams from the Appalachians to the big muddy Mississippi today, they sure are getting a spring cleaning. But I’m sure not going to mention spring cleaning when I get home tomorrow, because my wallet gets cleaned.
U.S. Flooding Map & Satellite Images | Flood Disaster Interactive Map
http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/floods/latest-news-map
http://water.weather.gov/ahps/
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/validProds.php?prod=FLS
pk at @6:34
As one with two freshwater aquariums of my own, that was my first thought as well. When will they realize that whatever charcoal runoff ending up in bodies of water acts as a part of a natural filtering process?
dremilson says:
April 19, 2013 at 9:18 pm
I’m reading this pretty differently than some commenters.
As we know, biochar has been suggested as a major geoengineering project to sequester carbon dioxide by people like James Hansen. The biochar theory is that materials with carbon in them could be added to agricultural soil (among other places) and the carbon materials would stay in place.
Now imagine world governments applying the biochar theory and funding massive biochar projects to sequester carbon. For example, you could burn municipal waste and use the energy from the pyrolysis to help fund the process. Utility companies would be totally on board with this.
The process is much cheaper than carbon capture and storage. (*Everything in this paragraph is fair game for you to make up your own sarcastic comment*).
This study of Jaffe et. al. suggests that the biochar theory, as previously envisioned, might be naive. A fair bit of the carbon materials will just leach out of the soil and wind up in rivers and oceans. Hence, I understand Jaffe et. al. to be saying that these projects could fail massively. (The actual research is behind a paywall so its possible I missed something important).
_____________
I think you got it, as far as we can tell on this side of the wall. Another consideration of the biochar/terra preta theory is that of raising soil pH. There’s a fair amount of char material in prairie soils.
OssQss (4/19/13 @ur momisugly 5:58PM) — Is that photo of you at Kmart, the caption of which would be:
“I was kinda climatologically scared.” ? And those people are Melody Harpole and Retired Engineer John and David Hoffer comforting you? You still look a little worried.
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
Thanks, Tom of Florida. I am old enough to have watched that episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati,” but had no idea where that quote came from until you told us. LOL, I was surmising that it was some 1950’s television science guy (not a real scientist, of course) apologizing on the evening news for dropping Mrs. McGillicuddy’s tom turkey out of an airplane in an experiment in aerodynamics that went terribly wrong.
dremilson, you make a good point (at 9:18PM, 4/19/13), and, yes, perhaps the summary mischaracterizes the “scientists” findings, but, it still doesn’t explain inherently incorrect statements such as:
“When charcoal forms it is typically deposited in the soil. ‘From a chemical perspective, no one really thought it dissolves, but it does,’ Jaffé says.”
Given your above guess is correct, dre, perhaps it is not the sign of a schism in the Cult that some might think, but, is the cover for jerks* like Hansen to save face. Just like the mascot in the Whitehouse, Hansen (they’ve given up on Gore) is an “expert” witness that the defense badly needs to rehabilitate. “NO ONE thought it dissolves…,”
Cult Defense Counsel: “… so how could you expect poor Hansen to have thought differently? What do you think he is? Some kind of a prophet or something?”
*Yeah, Hansen is an A Number 1 Class JERK. Jerk defined: a lying, mean-spirited, cad.
“Smoke On The Water”
http://youtu.be/7mCK05dgwgU
I like the new comment format. The chance to up and down vote on comments is good. If someone wants to reply to a poster, they can copy and paste the comment and write a reply. That’s all that is needed in this science dialog format. You are the best Anthony. I hope you’re not working too hard these days.
Seals & Crofts – Castles In The Sand
So, now we know! The growth in atmospheric CO2 is down to man-made forest fires. QED
Although the headline clearly states “Carbon” the text immediately following talks of wood fire residue. This is sloppy science in my view.
There are plenty of soluble products in wood ash however carbon in the charcoal form isn’t one of them, but I am sure there are mechanisms whereby other wood ash chemicals convert straight carbon into soluble carbon compounds. The only way for particulate carbon to be carried in water is as a suspension.
If particulate carbon is suspended in the oceans then I suggest this is a pretty good way of storing it, and one which occurs without human intervention (and hence without cost). This should be a cause for celebration if you happen to believe carbon is bad for the world.
OT but relevant to climate science.
Below is why we should always doubt the experts.
Most water filters use charcoal as the filter medium. Wounds are treated with charcoal dressings to hasten healing. Do these idiots know this?
By the way, since this thread started at ridiculous and remains there, I want to point out that I have no activated charcoal at my house. I hate activating it. First you have to phone Microsoft…..
“charcoal does not remain in the soil, as previously thought”
Thought by whom? The ignorant?
Here is a field where a geochemist in mineral exploration work probably knows a great deal more than a newbie climate worker.
The soils of the world are not accumulators of organic carbon. They have been exposed to enough of it for so long a time that accumulation would have been completed by now.
When one measures soil carbon by any of several semi-official ways, there is usually a couple of % C by weight of dried soil. This seems to be an equilibrium amount, perhaps the amount expected when plant growth is present. In sand deserts without vegetation, the figure is much lower.
Grand plans to sequester carbon by adding it to soil will fail. The presence of plants will ensure its eventual dissolution and it might even promote stronger plant growth until it lapses to its usual level.
If you treat the carbon into something like a glassy charcoal, same result. Time to decay is the main difference, but given time, it will.
I do so wish that green, ignorant people would stop the myth of carbon sequestration by soil. If they attempt it, they will simply pass the problem – if carbon is a problem – to our later generations, which is amoral.
The Amazonians were using biochar thousands of years ago, creating what are called “dark earths”, which are highly fertile. It can be a valuable soil additive, and that is its’ sole value. All this carbon budget and carbon sequestration nonsense is simply part of the once-great, now-dying CAGW gravy train.
The “Rate This” option is infantile and distracting. Please remove it if possible, Anthony.
I thought they claimed the problem was a small percentage atmospheric gas not the major building block which forms organic compounds. Carbon doesn’t hold heat or grab LWR or vibrate, does it?
Are they making this up as they go?
Not knowing science hurts my head.
I remain rationally ignorant.
cn
Geoff Sherrington says: April 20, 2013 at 3:24 am
“ignorant people would stop the myth of carbon sequestration by soil”
Check http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/ocean.productivity/index.php These are the experts and they estimate over 50 Gigatons of carbon are sequestered on land each year. If it is not sequestered in the soil, where is it sequestered?
“Most scientists thought charcoal was resistant. They thought, once it is incorporated into the soils, it would stay there,”
Scientists always think they know it all and are amazed when they are wrong, as they usually are!
From what I’ve can gather from the article is it’s nonsensical blather, I could see suspensions of insoluble inorganic carbon in water, but a solution would be in the parts per billion or trillion range!
I think Dittgar and Jaffé have a considerable burden of proof to rise above.
Q. Why do ducks have flat feet?
A. From stamping out forest fires.
Q. Why do elephants have flat feet?
A. From stamping out flaming ducks.
Q. Why do whales live in the sea?
A. To stay away from flaming elephants.
I’ll see if they’ll publish my paper as a follow-up study for the sources of carbon in the ocean, submitted by H.R. et al, 2013. Oh wait… Too late for AR5. Dang!
Peter Plail says:
April 20, 2013 at 1:13 am
Although the headline clearly states “Carbon” the text immediately following talks of wood fire residue. This is sloppy science in my view.
There are plenty of soluble products in wood ash however carbon in the charcoal form isn’t one of them, but I am sure there are mechanisms whereby other wood ash chemicals convert straight carbon into soluble carbon compounds.
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My first thought too.
As anyone who has ever had a wood fire in the open air knows, there is a mixture of stuff left after it goes out. Charcoal is very often absent, or minimal. They do not even attempt to address the total residue of fires.
Junk science, yet again.
And, who are these “scientists” who thought that charcoal would just permanently sit there in the soil? Last time I looked, “permanent” means forever. What kind of scientist would make such a stupid statement?
One of the useful qualities of charcoal is its ability to absorb toxins from solution.
I call hooey. Lots of high-organic soil turns black with no significant wildfires in their history. The article might be right about carbon making its way from soil to sea through erosion and runoff but attributing it all to charcoal is highly unlikely. Regular old decomposition turns far more organic matter into soil-based carbon.
Wildfires send megatons of soot into the air. That soot will deposit itself somewhere eventually. Where in the paper do they differentiate between deposition directly into the oceans and runoff??