A new study examining carbon exchange in the Amazon rainforest following extremely hot and dry spells reveals tropical ecosystems might be more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.
The findings, published online on April 28 in the journal Global Change Biology, have implications for the fate of the Amazon and other tropical ecosystems if greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.
“There have been a lot of projections of what might happen in the Amazon in the future as global warming intensifies,” said study co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of Earth Systems Science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. “In this study, we are bringing together many different data sources to take a more comprehensive and detailed look at how the Amazon has responded to severely hot and dry conditions that happened in the recent past.”
Net Biome Exchange
Land ecosystems “breathe” carbon dioxide (CO2) in and out during growth and decay, and the amount of CO2 taken up or released by biomes can offer important insights into how ecosystems could be affected by global warming. Because of their vast potential to store and release carbon, tropical ecosystems play a major role in regulating the Earth’s climate. If climate change causes tropical forests to emit large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, that carbon loss could amplify the global warming effects of fossil fuel emissions.
The study’s lead author, Caroline Alden, began the study at the University of Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and continued the research as a postdoctoral researcher working with Diffenbaugh at Stanford.
Alden and her colleagues developed a data analysis that combines weather data with CO2 measurements gathered by airplane surveys to calculate how much atmospheric carbon exchange, also known as net biome exchange (NBE), is happening across the Amazon basin. This new analysis allowed the researchers to track down the sources of CO2 absorption and emission in the rainforest during each month over a three-year period.
“By gathering many observations of CO2 in the atmosphere, we gain a sense of how CO2 is distributed above the Amazon, and how that changes in response to extreme climate events,” said Alden, who is currently a research associate at the University of Colorado. “By combining that knowledge of CO2 in the atmosphere with knowledge of where the winds came from in the days preceding the measurements, we can track down the sources of the signals that we see in the air.”
The analysis Alden’s team developed is the first to look at NBE variations month-by-month on regional scales that cover several million square kilometers, filling in a critical gap between very small-scale and larger-scale studies and helping to improve understanding of Amazon climate-carbon interactions.
Shifting Carbon Balance
For their analysis, the scientists calculated NBE flux in the Amazon for the three-year period spanning 2010 to 2012. In 2010, a major drought and unusually high temperatures affected much of the Amazon basin, but conditions had returned closer to normal by 2011 and 2012.
Alden and her team found evidence of very large shifts toward carbon loss to the atmosphere in the Amazon after periods of extreme heat and drought in 2010. What’s more, the shifts were surprisingly fast.
“We see that the carbon balance in the Amazon can change quickly in response to climate events,” Alden said, “Heat anomalies during the wet season are strongly correlated with increased carbon loss in the same month, and lower-than-average rainfall during the wet season is correlated with increased carbon loss in the following month.”
Increasing Heat Stress
It was already known that the 2010 drought had caused large carbon loss from the Amazon. However, the more detailed information developed in the new study allowed the researchers to analyze both the carbon and climate conditions that occurred in different parts of the Amazon as the drought evolved. This new analysis suggests that the loss of carbon may have preceded the onset of drought conditions, when the climate was unusually hot but not yet unusually dry.
“We have very strong evidence that severe heat has been increasing in the Amazon, and that more global warming will intensify this effect,” said Diffenbaugh, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Our findings suggest that regardless of changes in precipitation, the Amazon could be vulnerable to the increasing heat stress that we know is very likely to accompany further global warming.”
The group also found that in the eastern Amazon, CO2 was still being emitted to the atmosphere in large pulses throughout 2011, months after the severe heat and drought events had occurred. This “legacy” effect could indicate that tropical rainforests can take several years to recover from a major drought, Alden said.
Taken together, these results suggest the Amazon may be more sensitive to heat and drought conditions than previously thought – a finding that does not bode well for tropical ecosystems in the coming decades as the effects of climate change are expected to intensify.
“The Amazon ecosystem is a critical part of the global climate and carbon system, and home to unparalleled biodiversity,” Alden said. “These findings highlight how much more we still have to learn about tropical carbon-climate interactions, and underscore the importance of continued monitoring of the atmosphere in tropical regions.”
The findings also show that carbon emissions from the Amazon have tremendous capability to affect global climate, said John Miller, a study co-author and CIRES researcher at the time of the analysis and now a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Better understanding of NBE in the Amazon will continue to help scientists resolve major unknowns in future climate projections,” Miller said, “namely how tropical forest sensitivities to future changes in temperature, rainfall and drought patterns may accelerate global climate change.”
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And just remember they aren’t Windmills, they are Wind Turbines.
No mention of those monstrosities in this BBC program transmitted last night
BBC changing its climate change tune ?
– Sun affects climate change
– Maunder minimum caused Little Ice Change
– CO2 not mentioned once, but in passing ‘eliminate polluting’ power stations
– Fusion and solar are good sources of energy, no mention of wind or bio-fuels
– Anthropogenic warming (presumably is good) might compensate for a future ‘LIA type ‘ cooling.
– NASA’s Dr H appeared few times
– No CAGW views or experts appeared.
It is a small but important step away from relentless propaganda towards the reality.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074s96/the-sun
That’s old… 2006. Long before the Beeb decided to toe the party line.
Hi Neil
Yes I realised that, but it could be re-edited, they could take Maunder Minimum out, Beeb could put more anthropogenic nonsense in. If solar-earth climate science was good 10 years ago, no reason while should be bad now, particularly since then we learned that SC24 is going to be low, and solar activity may be winding down for few decades, global warming pause is real etc..
Why revive bad science?
“Long before the Beeb decided to toe the party line.”
Coming as I do from where majority of people toed party line, I know that once the shackles are off the party line will be abandon in a flush.
I presented a study on Fortaleza precipitation. The data presented 52 year cycle along with sub-multiples of 26, 13 & 6.5 years. Based on the amplitude and phase angles of these four cycles constructed the integrated pattern and projected this upt o 2020. This showed the drought condition after 2001 peak minimum around 208-2010. The drought is a part of natural variation. This presented in my book published in 1993 — originally published in 1984 in a Brazilian Journal.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Bird guillotines.
Pinwheels.
How about ‘quixotic energy-poverty generators’? Just a nod to the classics.
Well, they’re not milling anything.
A turbine is an enclosed, rotary, impeller- either driven to pump a fluid, or driven by a fluid for mechanical energy.
A windmill is an open rotary or oscillating structure driven by a fluid.
[This is the impostor who steals other commenters identities. His effort is wasted. Deleted. -mod]
Wind Blenders
Bird Bludgeoners
Raptor Rotisserie
Avian Abattoirs
And do not forget “money wasters”.
Ever wondered why there are so many species in the Tropics, especially the Amazon? Take parrots for example, lots of species. Well, the answer is that during ice ages, the rain forest was sequestered to small islands withing a grassland conditions due to the cooler climate. Then during interglacial periods, the rain forest returned, but not before isolated populations of parrots evolved into different directions.
This is normal evolution. Without climate swings we would not have the wonderful diversity of biota on this planet.
Warmists are not aware that the Rain forests in Brazil was over 50% smaller just 18,000 years ago,yet the CO2 level in the atmosphere at the time was around 180-200 ppm. The world forests at the time was also much smaller as well,so how come there was little CO2 in the atmosphere?
With far less plants around with vast deserts belts,CO2 in the atmosphere should have increased due to lack of sequestration from plants.
Professor Philip Stott 2001: ‘Jungles of the mind. The invention of the tropical rain forest.’
“At the end of the last ice age, only some 12-18000 years ago, the tropics were covered by seasonal savannah grasslands, cooler and much drier than now. There were no rain forests in the Malay Peninsula and much of Amazonia, and, despite the increasing human development of forested space, there are still more rain forests persisting than existed then.
As in Europe and North America, the forests came and went as climate changed; there is no Clementsian “long period of control” under one climate. Beneath many rain forests, there are sheets of ash, a testimony in the soil to past fires and non-forested landscapes.
The whole farrago of scientific gobbledegook becomes painfully obvious in the control myths of the rain forest as ‘the lungs of the world* and as ‘the carbon sinks of the Earth*. What do lungs do? Take a deep breath – they gulp in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide! If the rain forests are indeed ‘the lungs of the world’, they should surely be cut down as quickly as possible! In reality, some do precisely this because of their heavy decomposition systems while, if you truly want trees to take up carbon, you require newly-planted, young vigorous plantations.
The myth is exposed. Rain forests are quite unessential for maintaining the so-called ecological balance of the Earth. Compared with the oceans, the trees are ‘noise’ in the system. We no more need them than we did the forests of Europe, largely cleared by the 17th Century, or Thoreau’s woods in New England.”
And, it seems to be showing yet another example of First Temperatures Rise, and then CO2 Goes Up.
Now the rain forest is a net carbon emitter.
“Because of their vast potential to store and release carbon, tropical ecosystems play a major role in regulating the Earth’s climate. If climate change causes tropical forests to emitlarge amounts of CO2″
I wonder how Bruce Coburn will take the bad news?:
Maybe we need MORE LOGGING?
“We have very strong evidence that severe heat has been increasing in the Amazon, and that more global warming will intensify this effect,” said Diffenbaugh, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Our findings suggest that regardless of changes in precipitation, the Amazon could be vulnerable to the increasing heat stress that we know is very likely to accompany further global warming.”
Does this suggest that the studies were model based? If so, I wonder if the models take into account the inertia inherent in such large systems? I wonder if they have measured the time constants or just assumed them?
How can it get much hotter in a region with high humidity?
That was my thought. Same inertia as with El Niño and La Niña, and happening not far from the same latitudes. Completely reasonable to make that presumption.
might, if, might, could be, if, could, suggests, may have, could be, very likely, could, suggest, may be, expected…….is this ‘science'”
“These findings highlight how much more we still have to learn about tropical carbon-climate interactions, and underscore the importance of continued monitoring of the atmosphere in tropical regions.”………………..now I understand the ‘science’; you don’t know squat.
“…and underscore the importance of continued monitoring of the atmosphere in tropical regions.”………………..oh, and keep the grants coming.
Just wondering … what has been the temperature change in the Amazon over the last 150 years or so?
Has it been more, or less, than the supposed “global average”?
Do we really need to know that trivial piece of information? I mean, c’mon, that could confuse the narrative.
sarc 🙂
It can’t warm up much since it is a humid region.
“tropical carbon-climate interactions”
….. eh ?? We’re reaching brain damage levels now.
Interesting – Net Biome Exchange (NBE) == 0.00 (long term)
At first glance, this looks like a good way to calibrate a CO2 meter. You know a priori what the answer is, so you can adjust the meter accordingly.
But then we realize that the Amazon river is a huge transport of carbonaceous materials out of the system. So the carbon comes into the system as atmospheric CO2 and at least a small fraction of the carbon leaves within the river system. So for a good carbon balance, one would have to monitor the carbon outflow of the Amazon river into the Atlantic ocean as well. I suppose you could make it work, but I think there are easier ways of calibrating CO2 meters.
Now I know the value of good field work, but the Amazon is buggy, full of diseases, has poisonous critters of every description, and can be just plain miserable. For my money, any island in the West Indies would be far preferable for monitoring CO2. You get the same result and have a much more pleasant vacation.
Correct – but not a problem when you “fly over”. Then you put the collected Data into a computer in an air-conditioned building, make all the usual assumptions of the global-warming models, and publish the speculative results with all the ifs, ands and maybes.
***no wonder Stanford student, Sophie, is so upset!
26 Apr: Reuters: Rory Carroll: Stanford climate activists slam university over fossil fuel vote
Stanford University’s announcement on Monday that it will not rid its $22 billion endowment of oil and gas companies has raised the ire of campus climate activists, who said on Tuesday they will protest the decision…
Stanford’s Board of Trustees said that while it will not divest from fossil fuel companies, it would set up a climate task force to solicit ideas from across the Stanford community to address climate change…
***”We feel hurt and disappointed that the Stanford administration has chosen to remain invested in fossil fuel companies, in climate injustice, and in the destruction of our future,” said Sophie Harrison, a student and organizer of Fossil Free Stanford…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-environment-stanford-idUSKCN0XN2WR
MEMO:
TO: All Students
FROM: Office of Finance and Budgets
All:
Please be aware that Stanford University investments provide an important income stream for a variety of university needs. Therefore, any divestment program would have the following result, per 1.0 billion divestment:
Tuition Increase –
$2,200 / semester, undergraduate students
$2,800 / semester, graduate students
We look forward to having intelligent, informed discussion on your preferred level of divestment and consequent tuition increase.
Sincerely,
Director – OFB
No modern indoctrination center would ever tie tuition to actions. The progressives would not want the indoctrination to socialism to be interfered with by realization of the connection between Actions and Results. Students might then figure out the free stuff ain’t really free and the whole edifice would come crumbling to the ground when the now-confused students all ran for their “safe spaces” all at once!
Stanford can sell the securities and replace them with lesser performing securities thus making other “fossil investors” wealthier at Stanford’s’ expense, or destroy them making the fossil companies existing owners wealthier. I wonder which Sophie would prefer?
I stand ready to help Sophie win her cause by purchasing those securities at a discount. A wealth redistribution scheme I can fully support.
First of all, IPCC’s 2013 AR5 report admits NO global increasing trends of droughts over the past 65 years.
Second, a recent peer-reviewed paper shows global greening has increased 25~50% just since 1980 from increased CO2 fertilization, which would suggest tropical rainforest would thrive under higher CO2 levels.
Third, higher CO2 levels shrink leaf stomata, which decreases plants’ internal water loss, thus making them more drought resistant…
Fourth, the highest density of flora was during times when CO2 levels were around 2,000ppm…
If anything, CO2 levels are still too low…
Extreme Climate Stupidity (ECS).
Sounds like an Amazon carbon tax is in order, There, fixed the problem.
IT seems that they are telling us that CO2 is used less efficiently after periods of low rainfall, and higher temps, which does not seem exceptioinal. Plants recovering from a shortage of a key component of photosynthesis and growth. Has the Amazon experienced less net rainfall over the last 50 years? And, aren’t we finding a major greening over the earth along with increased crop yields, even in Amazonia?
What is really being said is “We have no idea what will happen, we’re throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. Maybe then we can claim victory and keep up the ruse.”
Garnished with a sprinkling of that “It’s worse than we thought” evil mojo.
I have come to understand that post-normal science means that AGW predictions, consensus and confidence in consensus is a random walk through sinks, emitters, cold, hot, wet and dry. Which means we can disregard the following non-random graph as a figment of our imagination. Didn’t happen. Believe in the random scientists.
Link to the graph’s source.
https://tothepoles.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/ice-core-review/
Factual information is very confusing to people who rely on computer models. It generally entails taking account of a wide variety of sources of information, and occasionally going outside.
That sounds like work to those guys, and messes up their speculatin’, supposin’, and scaremongerin’ sumthin’ awful!
‘extreme climate events’
Weather has events. Climate does not, extreme or otherwise.
At least this time they were measuring CO2 emissions, not just playing computer games.
They took real measurements, did some analysis, but then had to relate it all to climate change as projected by others to curry favor for their next grant.
They took CO2 levels while flying a plane!
Just what engine type do you suppose that plane uses?
Have to wonder whether the exhaust is ahead of or behind the CO2 sensor.
“might be more sensitive to climate change than previously thought”
“previously thought” –> house built upon sand, not science, just belief
“might be” –> SWAG
In other words more GW F.U.D.
And what exactly did they think previously?
“… how much more we still have to learn about tropical carbon-climate interactions, and underscore the importance of continued monitoring ”
Cry to emotions to ensure the GW Scam continues to get more and more funding.
Since the agenda science of climate is edging into health topics they won’t mind being held to medical research standards of conduct and reproducibility, right?
Which is probably why they are edging that way.
Have you seen the number of retracted medical studies due to poor experimental design? It looks a lot like climate science already (except they actually retract the papers when someone like McKitrick blows statistical holes through the paper). The difference is, if there is a serious methodological problem that isn’t addressed in medicine, victims (patients mistreated as a result) can and do sue for millions of dollars. Climate scientists don’t fix their papers because they can go to the local progressive AG and get the offender pointing out the baloney sued.
Models based on an assumption.
I give up.
“Climate event” is an oxymoron. “Weather event” makes sense.
“Climate” is a statistical construct, a *long term average* of the weather. The main issue is how may years’ worth of weather does it take to produce a meaningful average. In engineering practice it takes three examples to even estimate an average, and at least ten to be able to estimate the uncertainty of the average.
“Extreme” in statistics would require an example that is more than three standard deviations away from the average (99% level). Obviously one must not only know the average but also have a very good handle on the uncertainty before one can assign the word ‘extreme’.
Unfortunately these alarmists believe ‘uncertainty’ is purely a psychological term.
This is so right. An event would be weather by definition.
Andrew
How can a supposed branch of science be so fantasy based. This is ridiculous. Astrology thinks climate science is crap.
Weather-Watch
The sound of an approaching tornado can alert you to the oncoming storm. Many people say that it sounds like a freight train. Also look for a dark, often greenish-colored sky.
One of the earliest scientific approaches to weather prediction occurred around 300 B.C.E., documented in Aristotle’s work, “Meteorologica.” The ancient Greeks invented the termmeteorology, which means the study of atmospheric disturbances or meteors. Aristotle tried to explain the weather through the interaction of earth, fire, air, and water. His pupil Theophrastus really went to work and wrote the ultimate weather text The Book of Signs, which contained a collection of weather lore and forecast signs. Amazingly it served as the definitive weather book for 2,000 years! (What if they’re still readingthis 2,000 years from now?)
___________________________________________
Alden said. “These findings highlight how much more we still have to learn about tropical carbon-climate interactions, and underscore the importance of continued monitoring of the atmosphere in tropical regions.”
___________________________________________
What’s the need for Alden to say anything at all – we know that from the start of acricultural
economy there’s weather reporting, documentation, estimation / forecast.
Real science delivers, step by step.