From a long line of missing things in climate models and the University of Texas at Austin:
Symbiotic fungi inhabiting plant roots have major impact on atmospheric carbon, scientists say
AUSTIN, Texas — Microscopic fungi that live in plants’ roots play a major role in the storage and release of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere, according to a University of Texas at Austin researcher and his colleagues at Boston University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The role of these fungi is currently unaccounted for in global climate models.
Some types of symbiotic fungi can lead to 70 percent more carbon stored in the soil.
“Natural fluxes of carbon between the land and atmosphere are enormous and play a crucial role in regulating the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and, in turn, Earth’s climate,” said Colin Averill, lead author on the study and graduate student in the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin. “This analysis clearly establishes that the different types of symbiotic fungi that colonize plant roots exert major control on the global carbon cycle, which has not been fully appreciated or demonstrated until now.”
“This research is not only relevant to models and predictions of future concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, but also challenges the core foundation in modern biogeochemistry that climate exerts major control over soil carbon pools,” added Adrien Finzi, co-investigator and professor of biology at Boston University.
Averill, Finzi and Benjamin Turner, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, published their research this week in Nature.
Soil contains more carbon than both the atmosphere and vegetation combined, so predictions about future climate depend on a solid understanding of how carbon cycles between the land and air.
Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis in the form of carbon dioxide. Eventually the plant dies, sheds leaves, or loses a branch or two, and that carbon is added to the soil. The carbon remains locked away in the soil until the remains of the plant decompose, when soil-dwelling microbes feast on the dead plant matter and other organic detritus. That releases carbon back into the air.
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  IMAGE: This Eastern Hemlock stands at Harvard Forest.
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One of the limits that both the plants and the soil-dwelling microbes share is the availability of nitrogen, an essential nutrient for all life. Most plants have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi, which help extract nitrogen and nutrients from the soil and make that nitrogen available for the plants to use. Recent studies have suggested that plants and their fungi compete with the soil microbes for the nitrogen available in the soil and that this competition reduces decomposition in the soil.
There are two major types of the symbiotic fungi, ecto- and ericoid mycorrhizal (EEM) fungi and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. EEM fungi produce nitrogen-degrading enzymes, which allows them to extract more nitrogen from the soil than the AM fungi extract.
Examining data from across the globe, Averill and his colleagues found that where plants partner with EEM fungi, the soil contains 70 percent more carbon per unit of nitrogen than in locales where AM fungi are the norm.
The EEM fungi allow the plants to compete with the microbes for available nitrogen, thus reducing the amount of decomposition and lowering the amount of carbon released back into the atmosphere.
“This study is showing that trees and decomposers are really connected via these mycorrhizal fungi, and you can’t make accurate predictions about future carbon cycling without thinking about how the two groups interact. We need to think of these systems holistically,” said Averill.
The researchers found that this difference in carbon storage was independent of and had a much greater effect than other factors, including the amount of plant growth, temperature and rainfall.
Averill is a student in the ecology, evolution and behavior graduate program in the lab of Christine Hawkes, associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology.
Additional contact: Lee Clippard, media relations, University of Texas at Austin, 512-232-0675, clippard@austin.utexas.edu
good grief…
Every time they discover a new carbon life form…
….it has a MAJOR impact on atmospheric carbon
…and they are not the slightest bit embarrassed to say it
Well put! Deserving of a full post, you have uttered what many of us feel. I like the 200 year unwritten contract bit, I never thought of it that way, and you are right. CAGW scientists are moving away from presenting their evidence to advocacy and investing in ventures to benefit them directly. See Dr. Turkey stuck in Antarctica.
Very sad in fact, Austin Texas, and the whole of the University of Texas system has gone full moon bat now for years and years. They get all that money from the West Texas Oil play that was given to them to do good things with, yet they bite the hands that feed them.
Full Moon Bat Cur Dogs.
You have to see it up close to understand how bad it is.
I have been there, it is BAD.
The ‘biomass pyramid’ is a term that describes the fact that smaller life forms are so much more numerous than the larger ones in the same environment that they outmass the larger ones. When energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, typically only ten percent is used to build new biomass. The remaining ninety percent goes to metabolic processes or is dissipated as heat.
In marine environments (totalling several times larger than all terrestrial ones combined) corals, calcareous phytoplankton, mussels, snails, sea urchins and other marine organisms use calcium (Ca) and bicarbonate (HCO3) in seawater to construct their calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shells or skeletons. When these organisms die their shells/skeletons sink to the sea floor, forming lime sediments that eventually become limestone. By taking bicarbonate out of the water they act as a biobuffer to moderate the carbonate/bicarbonate concentrations in the water as well as the pH.
This results in the largest carbon sink on the planet – one not accounted for in either the models or the ‘acidification’ arguments.
Also on UT and other Universities.
They are so into the redistribution of wealth operation they can not see the truth for the lie wall they and their prior family built up.
These Universities in turn have done great damage to the National Labs at Sandia, Livermore, Los Alamos etal. If you just read to public publications printed from any one of the labs you can tell what is going on. All of the publicantions are 100% into “The Climate Change” fraud. Many if not an amount of 60% or more of the professional staff at the labs are true belivers in the cult of CO2 kills.
It is in fact a national security risk. They are telling the Generals and Admarils to build “climate OK ships and tanks” to defend U.S. . Nuts.
Another factor I think is inadequately accounted for in climate models is the precipitation of inorganic carbonates in the soil. As atmospheric carbon dioxide increases (and therefor the soil air as well) it reacts with soil solution cations (particularly Ca++ and Mg++) to precipitate fairly insoluble carbonates that sequester the CO2 in the soil.
It’s a pity there isn’t some tax free haven we can all move to… In the tropics.
fobdangerclose says:
January 9, 2014 at 7:25 am
Very sad in fact, Austin Texas, and the whole of the University of Texas system has gone full moon bat now for years and years. They get all that money from the West Texas Oil play that was given to them to do good things with, yet they bite the hands that feed them.
Full Moon Bat Cur Dogs.
You have to see it up close to understand how bad it is.
I have been there, it is BAD.
__________________________
Yes, with Lyndon Johnson this and Barbara Jordan that, it’s easy to see that UT is a prominent home of moon battery. It’s not so much political that all of that oil money flows to Austin, it’s more for the hopes that Texas will be able to beat Oklahoma in football, at least once every few years.
ROM: Three cheers for a expressing what so many of us feel! Well said.
“Microscopic fungi that live in plants’ roots play a major role in the storage and release of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere”
Microscopic fungi and bacteria that are associated with plant roots, either in close proximity in the soil nearby, inside the suberized root cells, or on the soil surface play…..
fixed
dabbio says:
I share bwanajohn’s concerns. I’d like to believe that these neglected carbon sources and sinks figure into the picture. In that connection, it would be good to have some mass estimates on fungal carbon input/output to throw into the carbon cycle mass balance.
Per this article, it isn’t the carbon in the fungal biomass that is the interesting quantity. It is the carbon in the dead biomass (mostly from vascular plants) that isn’t being decomposed by soil microbes, because the mycorrhizal fungi are bogarting all the bioavailable nitrogen.
But more important, it seems to me, is the fact that there is this steady upward creep in atmospheric CO2, regardless of whether you think it has much effect on climate. Does the existence and weight of a fungal carbon component imply that the Keeling curve would be differently shaped, or have a different absolute level without that component?
No one knows. The carbon budget isn’t closed. The Keeling curve is an observation without a rigorously defensible explanation.
If fungal carbon, or oceanic carbon, or any other input has a massive effect on atmospheric CO2, how come it does not SEEM to affect the Keeling curve?
It does.
About 50% of the carbon that humanity is allegedly foisting into the atmosphere every year simply vanishes, and does not show up in the Keeling curve (or anywhere else, for that matter). How? The people who are the least interested in the answer to that question are those that think CO2 is the most powerful molecule in the universe. The resolution of that apparent paradox is called “politics”.
bwanajohn and dabbio:
Thankyou for your excellent comments on the subject of the paper. They are only excelled in this thread by the superb post from ROM concerning how so-called ‘climate science’ is damaging the reputation of science.
I write in attempt to answer your points, and – to save others needing to find them – I copy your posts.
At January 9, 2014 at 6:04 am bwanajohn says in total
dabbio replied to that at January 9, 2014 at 6:25 am with a post that began saying
Then followed that with a post at January 9, 2014 at 6:58 am which says in total
I write to provide a brief reply to your concerns.
Firstly, the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis consists of three premises; viz.
1.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (notably CO2) are accumulating in the atmosphere to increase the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere.
2.
Increase to GHGs in the air raise global temperature significantly.
3.
The observed increase to GHGs in the air from accumulation of HGs in the air will raise global temperature so significanrtly that great harm will result.
There are reasons to doubt each of these three premises, but if any one of them were shown to be wrong then the entire AGW-hypothesis would have been falsified.
Many people including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have assumed that Point 1 is true and have acted on that assumption. They use scenarios to estimate how civilisation will develop to produce future anthropogenic GHG emissions then model the future accumulation of the emissions in the air. The IPCC uses the ridiculous Bern Model to do this.
Secondly, Point 1 may be wrong. There are people who have often posted to WUWT who are certain it is right (e.g. Ferdinand Engelbeen) and others who are certain it is wrong (e.g. Bart). But I do not know if it is right or wrong in part or in whole.
If Point 1 is not completely right then the ‘projections’ of AGW are plain wrong.
Thirdly, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere does not match with the increase being an accumulation of the anthropogenic CO2.
The seasonal variation of atmospheric CO2 is low at Mauna Loa but is still much larger than the annual increase; see the graph at
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The annual increase is the residual of the seasonal variation.
If the anthropogenic emission were accumulating because it was overloading the sinks then the seasonal sequestration would slow as the sinks began to fill. But that does not happen; the CO2 rises rapidly for half the year then plummets rapidly before reversing to again rapidly rise.
Furthermore, the annual anthropogenic CO2 emission does not match the annual rise of atmospheric CO2.
Typically the annual rise of atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to about half the anthropogenic CO2 emission. But in some years almost all the anthropogenic emission seems to be sequestered while in other years almost none seems to be sequestered. There are reasons why smoothing of the data may be needed to obtain agreement between the emissions data and the atmospheric increase. Different countries may use different 12-month periods for assessment of their annual emission so 2-year smoothing is justifiable. And in some years CO2 emissions of a year may be incorrectly accounted as being from an adjacent year so 3-year smoothing can be justified.
But the IPCC uses 5-year smoothing to obtain agreement between the anthropogenic CO2 emissions data and the atmospheric CO2 increase. Smoothing of more than 3 years is not justifiable but the IPCC uses 5-year smoothing because less smoothing fails to obtain the agreement.
One of our 2005 papers (referenced in my first post to this thread) attempted to falsify that the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration was natural or was anthropogenic.
We assumed that the system of the carbon cycle had altered its equilibrium state and is adjusting towards its new equilibrium state. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to the new equilibrium. This would explain the dynamics observed in the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The seasonal variation is induced by equilibrium change with time of year, and the lowest concentration of each year is the quasi-equilibrium obtained at that time as the system continues to adjust.
Our paper reports attribution studies we conducted that used six different models to emulate the causes of the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century. These numerical exercises are a caution to estimates of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The three basic models used in these exercises each emulate different physical processes.
The three basic models were each used to assess if the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be attributed to an anthropogenic cause (i.e. the anthropogenic emission) and if it could be attributed to a natural cause (e.g. the global temperature rise of the early twentieth century). Thus we assessed 6 models.
Each of the models agrees with the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. They each demonstrate that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of the anthropogenic emission or may be solely a result of, for example, desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it. Furthermore, extrapolation using these models gives very different predictions of future atmospheric CO2 concentration whatever the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Each of the models in this paper matches the available annual empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.
So, if one of the six models of our paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, as the above article says, we need to obtain a holistic understanding of the carbon cycle if we are to understand likely future atmospheric CO2 concentration. And much of what happens in the carbon cycle is not known.
For more information about this I suggest you use the WUWT Search facility and find items about Salby then read the discussions in the threads.
I hope this brief answer about a large subject is clear and adequate.
Richard
Dabio says ” Does the existence and weight of a fungal carbon component imply that the Keeling curve would be differently shaped, or have a different absolute level without that component?”
Once again I point out Murry Salby’s work that found no correlation between total atmospheric CO2 and anthropogenic emissions. He shows total CO2 closely correlated to the global temperature and soil moisture.
It gets stranger.
It’s a tree killer!
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. My BS detector is going mad.
Was this one of those “known unknowns,” or an “unknown unknown?” Who knows?
I don’t know.
bwanajohn says:
January 9, 2014 at 6:04 am
….this study would need to explain an error in expected CO2 levels and to my knowledge the levels are at expected levels.
So is this saying that we can expect future CO2 levels to drop significantly due to the fungi interchange? What am I missing?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Corruption.
Explained here: Statement written for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
When you have to grasp at fungi to somehow keep your CAGW-agenda afloat, you are toast…
Is this the fungus that will break the camel’s back?
Pete in Cumbria UK says: January 9, 2014 at 6:14 am
Very well put. The term for it is “mining the soil”
One part of rotation used to be turning your crop fields into pasture to add organic matter to a worn out field. Now the blooming idiots are villifying farm animals that do so much for the soil. We have “Modern Farming” aka monoculture by large corporations who don’t give a hoot about the long term health of the soil instead of farmers who looked at the land as the legacy for their heirs.
fobdangerclose says: Full Moon Bat Cur Dogs.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes that describes the Ag college I went to . It was a darn good school but already headed into activist LaLaLand in the late 1960’s
all carbon cycle estimates are invention. Organic material oxidizes spontaneously as it decomposes and so releases CO2. There is no way to measure this and do not forget that the estimates that we have are provided by those who show little regard for scientific rigor.
================================================================
For those who have put an agenda or a paycheck first, the science is always settled in the present no matter how unsettled the science previously used for those purposes has become.
Embryology? Nebraska Man? The Tree Ring? Hansen’s testimony?
mogamboguru:
Your post at January 9, 2014 at 8:34 am says in total
It could be “the fungus that will break the camel’s back”.
It seems you may have got the wrong end of the stick.
The finding about fungus undermines a basic tenet of the AGW scare as promoted by e.g. the IPCC.
Please see my post at January 9, 2014 at 8:14 am. This link jumps to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/09/now-its-the-fungi-carbon-footprint-that-isnt-in-climate-models/#comment-1530462
Richard
David Coe says:
January 9, 2014 at 3:11 am
Don’t be too quick to mock this work. Climate models are all based upon the assumption declared by the IPCC that atmospheric CO2 is in an equilibrium state of zero Net Biome Production.
Climate models are not based on any equilibrium NBP, they are based on net uptake of increased CO2 by the biosphere as well as the oceans.
mpainter says:
January 9, 2014 at 8:55 am
all carbon cycle estimates are invention. Organic material oxidizes spontaneously as it decomposes and so releases CO2. There is no way to measure this and do not forget that the estimates that we have are provided by those who show little regard for scientific rigor.
Indeed decomposing organics give CO2, but that process uses oxygen. The uptake of CO2 produces oxygen. Similar releases and uptake by the oceans don’t need or release oxygen. That makes it possible to calculate how much CO2 is released or taken away by the whole biosphere: from plants, fungi and microbes to insects and animals:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
That shows an increasing uptake of CO2 of ~1 GtC/year by the whole biosphere. Compare that to the 9 GtC/year human emissions…
[ Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
January 9, 2014 at 10:30 am
Similar releases and uptake by the oceans don’t need or release oxygen. ]
Internal and externally forced variability in oceanic oxygen (O2) are investigated on
different spatiotemporal scales using a six-member ensemble from the National Center
for Atmospheric Research CSM1.4-carbon coupled climate model. The oceanic O2
inventory is projected to decrease significantly in global warming simulations of the 20th
and 21st centuries…… Recent observations of oceanic oxygen changes show
decreasing trends over the last decades in the circumpolar
region, in middle and high latitudes of the North Pacific, in
the eastern South Pacific and in the North Atlantic [Emerson
et al., 2004]. Stramma et al. [2008] reported a decline in O2 in
tropical oceans and an expanding of Oxygen Minimum
Zones during the past 50 years. However, there are also
regions where oxygen has recently increased such as the
southern Indian Ocean [McDonagh et al., 2005] and the
boundary region between the subpolar and subtropical gyres
in the North Pacific [Mecking et al., 2008], possibly
reflecting natural variability. The observed changes over
the last several decades in dissolved oxygen range from
about 80 to +10 mmol kg1, and can amount to up to 50%
of the total dissolved oxygen in oxygen-poor regions.
Whether observed changes in dissolved oxygen are the
result of natural variability or of anthropogenic influences
is still an open question.
GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES, VOL. 23, GB1003, doi:10.1029/2008GB003316, 2009
I haven’t seen the correction for increased ocean life forms.