[kiwichick]

@ dohboi.......30 years farming / consulting in New Zealand and Australia .....mainly dairy....some cropping ....has convinced me how vulnerable our ag systems are to variations in climate/ weather extremes

In my experience both NZ and Aus are vulnerable ... Aus probably more so on the mainland ... Tasmania is in a better relative position....cooler and wetter.

If you look at the grain belt in both South west and South east Aus , both rain and temperatures are critical ...minor increases in temp . , particularly when rain has been below normal levels can ....and does ... drastically reduce crop yields.

The long term trend in rainfall in both areas ( SW Western Aus and NSW / Vic ) are declining .... about 10 % so far....and temperatures have risen by approx. 0.9 degrees C over the last century

In NZ we are particularly vulnerable to disruption of fertilizer imports ....Phosphate and Potash mainly ...but also Sulpher and Magnesium .....most NZ soils are relatively recent and not very fertile in their natural state. Most of our fert is imported from the middle East and North Africa .....not the most stable of areas. Our climate is more temperate than Aus ...but the east coast of both North and south Islands will be increasingly susceptible to drought in a warming climate ....and the West coasts could be subject to more extreme rainfall events in the future

Effectively we are like everywhere else.....adapted to the current .....or cooler ....conditions .....not hotter ones.

[Tanada]

Yes SOUTH Australia is getting drier, but TROPICAL Australia is expanding southward at the same rate. For every degree of latitude that shifts from dry to desert another degree of desert shifts to wet and dry tropical climate patterns.

When you focus on just one spot while talking about a place as big as Australia you miss a great deal of the picture.

Since 1979, the planet’s waistline been expanding poleward by 56km to 111km per decade in both hemispheres. Future climate projections suggest this expansion is likely to continue, driven largely by human activities – most notably emissions of greenhouse gases and black carbon, as well as warming in the lower atmosphere and the oceans.

Rounding that to 50-110 km a decade or 5-11 km a year what does that mean for Australia? Well sediment studies logging the last 50 million years or so of data strongly suggest that north Australia will not only continue to be tropical jungle, but also that the jungle will spread a long way to the south as the global climate warms. On the other hand the same study shows south Australia and eventually Tasmania will have their moderate climate replaced with a desert climate.
So if you are a smart person in Australia what do you do? My recommendation. if you live in the south sell while your land is still valued and invest the money you get in new land as close to the climate zone line on the dry side of the convergence in the north. With an advancing rate of 5-11 km a year and skill in picking your location you should end up in a wet/dry tropical zone soon after you invest and then you can grow any of the crops typically grown in the wet and dry tropical climate zone for the foreseeable future.
Here is a link to a lengthy study confirming these paleoclimate reconstructions.

[evilgenius]

Thinking in terms of survival, I wonder if this means that there will be places where, just like in winter with cold, it won't be possible to live exposed to the elements for very long? People do live in these places. They use structures to do so, and they travel about inside of their cars. They don't stay outside in the cold very long. But is it harder to defend against heat than against cold? Is there anything about surviving in heat that people will have trouble with? I can see more people living in earth homes, perhaps. In Southern France I saw close building techniques that gave people a lot of shade in some of the small towns I visited when I was there. Maybe the spread out way of suburban building won't make it past the next half degree in various places, like Phoenix? That'd be a huge shock to some people. In some cases, it would mean changing almost everything about their lives, down to their ideals and beliefs.

[Pops]

The earth is a heat sink. Down a ways, say 10', there is a lot of "coolth." Earth mass is a flywheel so needs cooler temps in the winter to "recharge" and it gets warmer as summer wears on. Too, the soil plays a part I'd guess, tighter soils holding more heat, maybe?

I'd almost say the better place is the currently warmer places as they are longer adapted. I'm now in Washington state, NW US, just inland from the coast on the Columbia river. This area gets 48" rain avg but has the typical Mediterranean dry summer that I'd guess will get longer and longer. Tho it is moderated by proximity of the ocean I assume drought conditions here will increase. Moderate drought ATM.

[GHung]

Perhaps you folks are unaware of this stuff? Really? I posted it a bunch of time in appropriate threads. Increased CO2 emissions have triggered an equal or greater CO2 uptake response by the planets vegetation, ie Gaia has saved the day with his/her negative feedback. It removes CO2.

35 years of NASA satellite data (below) was analyzed by an international team of scientists as reported in Nature Magazine (following article)

Official NASA web site: "Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds"

From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.

An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.

Nature Journal of Climate Change: Greening of the Earth and its drivers

We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend. – Zhu et al.

This new trapped trapped carbon dwarfs all the carbon ever previously locked up (and recently combusted) in all the coal and oil produced over the last 150 million years. Petroleum science instructs us that anaerobic decomposition and deposition of organic matter was an extremely rare event. Not so global greening.

The NASA data doesn't even include additional growth of sea/freshwater algae. Land and sea plants use identical photosynthetic process, so the additional uptake CO2 in additional growth of algae of atmosphere carbon dwarfs the land-based/measured uptake.

Yes. That's why atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing. Because increased greening is dwarfing "all the carbon ever previously locked up (and recently combusted)".

Pstar's Increased Greening/Dwarfing Graph




I'm sure you can explain that, P.

[drwater]

Explain what? I did already. Again: incredible, huge, record amounts of CO2 are now being removed from the atmosphere. In amounts that dwarf what we burn.

I think Ghung was explaining basic math. If the total CO2 removal rate exceeds total CO2 production, then CO2 concentration would be decreasing. But it's actually increasing - quite rapidly on a geologic time scale. Go back and look at your 7th grade math book.

[Cid_Yama]

Atmospheric CO2 increases have leveled out in recent years.

What kind of nonsense is that? We touched 400 ppm in 2013, crossed that threshold permanently in 2016, never to return, and breached 410 ppm just one year later. Shortly we will pass 410 ppm permanently.

pbrain more like it.

[Pops]

I'm not big on models, I like this one tho

but even if correct the story ends the same:

Without effective reduction of global CO2 emissions, however, future climate change remains a stark reality.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13428

“Unfortunately, this increase is nowhere near enough to stop climate change,” says Keenan, adding that their results answer questions and pose new ones. “We’ve shown the increase in terrestrial carbon uptake is happening, and with a plausible explanation why. But we don’t know exactly where the carbon sink is increasing the most, how long this increase will last, or what it means for the future of Earth’s climate.”

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/11/08/at ... co2-pause/

[GHung]

From my friend pstar:



ghung, your charts are dishonest and incomplete. 1200 ppm is actually historically low 300ppm or less is unhealthy. Current levels are great for people, plants and the planet.

A number of things could have produced that growth rate curve, like a big fat recession in the middle of it. But NOAA and the EPA may be trying to pull our legs, eh? Anyway, with our locally cooler temps and above normal rainfall this summer, things are sucking up a lot of carbon as I type.

[drwater]

PStarr,

Apologies for getting snarky. There is already too much snarkiness on this site. Here where I live because the nights have been so warm and we have had continuous smoke and ash for about 30 days, it kinda makes one grumpy. Things are so different than 40 years ago, it's hard to believe anyone around here doubts global warming. California average nighttime summer temperatures are up 6 degrees F over the last 40 years.

Look at the chart drwater. Read the link drwater. Atmospheric CO2 increases have leveled out in recent years, as the effects of CO2 fertilization upon earth's plants has begun to ramp up. Just the beginning of GAIA's happy nuturing love for us. It will be wonderful

Yes, that's a good thing, BUT "increases have levelled out" in the article you quote only means that the rate of increase has levelled out. Concentrations are still increasing, which means total CO2 emitted (from people, bacteria, everything) still exceeds CO2 sinks. The large amounts of anthropogenic CO2 added still exceed any increase in uptake by sinks such as plants and oceans despite your previous posts stating the contrary.

[Plantagenet]

The ratio of CO2 entombed in fossil fuels to free CO2 and CO2 already in the planets vegetation is minuscule. We could burn many orders of magnitude more coal and oil then exists in total on the planet, and the released carbon would be a tiny fraction of the carbon sunk in the planets oceans, grasslands and forests.

True enough.

But the greenhouse effect is a direct function of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

And that value is clearly going up, increasing the greenhouse effect and causing global warming.

You do get that the concentration of CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere, don't you?

Cheers!

[Pops]

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7212

A single season of drought in the Amazon rainforest can reduce the forest's carbon dioxide absorption for years after the rains return, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. This is the first study to quantify the long-term legacy of an Amazon drought.

[dbruning]

The greening is definitely a good thing, but the CO2 concentrations are still going up.

My main worry is that with the drought and fires we're currently experiencing, a lot of those trees and vegetation may end up giving back their locked up CO2.

My second worry is that even with the greening the CO2 levels are going up, where is that extra CO2 coming from? Could it be all the methane bubbling up and breaking down into CO2?

[Pops]

They have a wad of citations/refs, I can't get to many, (prolly wouldn't understand them anyway, LOL)

[asg70]

Why is this good news, happy news is roundly ignored?

Good news is relative. You seem to have difficulty accepting that the world remains well-supplied with oil.

[Pops]

Why is this good news, happy news is roundly ignored? It made a difference in my life. Way less stress, more able to appreciate that other approaching [email protected] storm lol

Thanks for the link.
It's great news. Just like the umpteen hundred instances of bad news on the topic that I took with a grain of salt. They are models, observations, studies; not the living word of Gaia. I mean I like the idea of Gaia as self-healing system; but I also like the idea of a loving god that cares if my football team wins, doesn't mean I believe it.

[kublikhan]

We do know that the additional vegetation already laid down (by that greening effect) dwarfs all the fozzilized vegetation we have burned or will burn as fossil fuels.

oceans and land plants remove about 45 percent of the CO2 emitted by human activities each year. And the amount of CO2 that’s removed has more than doubled in the past 50 years. With plants, which need carbon dioxide to grow, that’s because CO2 increases photosynthesis. So more CO2 in the atmosphere means plants also absorb more CO2. But that doesn’t mean we’re fine pumping the greenhouse gas into the air. In fact, more CO2 means warmer temperatures, and warmer temperatures cause ecosystems — plants, trees, and even bacteria in soil — to release more CO2 back into atmosphere. So it’s a give and take.

Though the findings seem like good news, they’re not really, Keenan says. The last two years have been the hottest on record, which means that the magic the plants were doing has probably already ended. The CO2 plants store is also not gone forever, Keenan says. As more ecosystems are in danger because of climate change, more plants and trees will die and will rerelease that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There’s no escape. And the only solution is to reduce the amounts of CO2 we emit in the first place.

“The growth of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to grow. And until we really cut our emissions, that’s what’s going to continue to happen,” Keenan says. “So plants are helping us out, they’re buying us time, but ultimately it’s up to us.”

For 12 years, plants bought us extra time on climate change

Why is this good news, happy news is roundly ignored? It made a difference in my life. Way less stress, more able to appreciate that other approaching [email protected] storm lol

It is good news the global greening is slowing down the effects of human co2 emissions. But the planet is only absorbing half of the co2 we are emitting. That means climate change cannot be dismissed just because global greening is occurring.

CO2 removals by natural sinks
Of the total emissions from human activities during the period 2007-2016, about 46% accumulated in the atmosphere, 24% in the ocean and 30% on land. During this period, the size of the natural sinks grew in response to the increasing emissions, though year-to-year variability of that growth is large. The strength of the 2016 ocean CO2 sink was above the decadal average and the land sink below average. Both trends are consistent with a positive phase of El Niño. The total estimated sources do not match the total estimated sinks, i.e., the carbon imbalance. This imbalance reflects the gap in our understanding and results from the uncertainties from all budget components.

Atmospheric CO2
The annual growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 6.1±0.2 GtC (22.4 GtCO2 yr-1) in 2016, corresponding to an increase of 2.89±0.09 parts per million. This is well above the 2007-2016 average of 4.7±0.1 GtC yr-1 (17.2 GtCO2 yr-1) and reflects the large interannual variability in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration associated with the positive face of El Niño. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 402.8±0.10 ppm averaged over 2016, and the atmosphere is projected to accumulate an additional 5.3 GtC in 2017.

Cumulative Carbon Emissions
The cumulative carbon emissions are the sum of the total CO2 emitted during a given period of time. Total cumulative emissions from 1870 to 2016 were 420±20 GtC (1539 GtCO2) from fossil fuels and industry, and 180±60 GtC (660 GtCO2) from land use change. The total of 600±65 GtC was partitioned among the atmosphere (245±5 GtC), ocean (145±20 GtC), and the land (190±45 GtC). Land-use change represents about 31% of cumulative emissions over 1870–2016, coal 32%, oil 25%, gas 10%, and others 3%.

Global Carbon Budget

[kublikhan]

Furthermore warmer temperatures contribute, not detract from plant growth.

Warmer temperatures also result in plants releasing more c02.

There is no empirical evidence to support the model-based claim that future carbon uptake by plants will diminish on a global scale due to rising temperatures. In fact, just the opposite situation has been observed in the real world.

This is incorrect:

A study involving the Australian National University, Western Sydney University, and centres around the world has found plants release more carbon dioxide through their respiration. And as global temperatures rise, scientists say the output of carbon dioxide by plants will accelerate.

"What will happen in the future will be that those rates of carbon released by plants will increase as the world gets warmer, and it will have an impact on how much carbon is stored in vegetation, how much accumulates in the atmosphere in the future." The study examined about 1,000 plant species in a range of climate extremes, to determine how much carbon dioxide is released in various scenarios. Researchers said plants could also see a declining ability to absorb carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and that carbon flow models and budget projections would need to be altered in response to the findings.

Plants release up to 30 per cent more CO2 than previously thought

Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide.

The Opposite of Photosynthesis
Plants are famous for photosynthesis, the process that stores energy in sugars built from carbon dioxide and water. Photosynthesis produces the oxygen we breathe as a byproduct. But plants also use oxygen and release carbon dioxide in the same manner that people and animals do. Soil respiration includes carbon dioxide from both plants and soil microbes, and is a major component of the global carbon cycle.

Researchers found that the total amount of carbon dioxide being emitted from soil in 2008 was more than in 1989.

Even soil feels the heat: Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms

more CO2 means warmer temperatures, and warmer temperatures cause ecosystems — plants, trees, and even bacteria in soil — to release more CO2 back into atmosphere.

For 12 years, plants bought us extra time on climate change

[kublikhan]

Yet the planet has warmed and there's more, not less vegetation.

This statement is correct. However it does not invalidate any of the studies I linked to.

So can those studies kub. They need a rewrite

Incorrect. The studies do not need a rewrite just because there is more vegetation. The question asked was: do plants release more CO2 at warmer temperatures? The answer: yes. This holds true for a single plant or a forest. Further, just because there is more vegetation, does not mean that it absorbs all of the CO2 humans release. Even with the increase in vegetation, plants absorb but a fraction of the CO2 humans release.

[kublikhan]

kub, your question is meaningless. As is the answer. You asked it of yourself.

As I said previously we have empirical data that contradicts those studies. Therefore said studies must be flawed or limited somehow. The planet is warmer and plants take up more, not less CO2. It is your task to determine why or how your studies are flawed. It is not my job.

You are misunderstanding something here pstarr. The studies I am linking to refer to the rate plants/soil uptake/discharge co2. And they are telling us that plants/soil discharge more co2 the warmer it gets. The empirical data you point to measures the amount of plants on the planet. And it tells us that the amount of plants has increased. There is no contradiction here. Plants/soils can discharge co2 at a higher rate at higher temperatures and at the same time we can have more plant cover on the globe. The total amount of co2 taken up by plants can still increase even if the rate decreases slightly because there are more of them.

Unfortunately, this is not the panacea to global warming you make it out to be. For one thing, the net increase in plants absorbing more CO2 is far too small to keep up with the increases in CO2 emissions. IE, we are belching out CO2 far faster than this increased plant cover can absorb. For another, much of this greening is happening as snow and ice melt. Snow and ice deflect heat. Vegetation absorbs it. IE, it might slow global warming via the greenhouse effect a bit. However it could also make global warming increase by changing the albedo of the planet(greenery absorbs more heat than snow and ice).

The planet is getting greener while global warming slows. But it comes with worrying caveats. For starters, the effect may not last as increased temperatures dampen plant growth and rainfall patterns change. Also, much of the greening has occurred in cold regions previously blanketed in snow. And while snow and ice reflect solar energy away from the planet, vegetation absorbs it, increasing land surface temperatures. Finally, the effect is simply too small to keep up with emissions. “Unfortunately,” says Keenan, the increased carbon uptake by plants “is nowhere near enough to stop climate change.”

Greening the Planet: The Fertilizer Effect of CO2 Slows Warming

“From this research, we can see these plants can help absorb some carbon dioxide, but there’s still a lot of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere.” In fact, during that decade, a total of 60 billion tons of carbon was added to the atmosphere.

“We know that the ice is melting in the north and it’s being replaced by vegetation. As permafrost melts and ice cover decreases, it’s replaced by vegetation.” Things get worse. Verchot says this type of vegetation in the north actually worsens climate change. “It’s going to have a negative impact because vegetation in the north is dark and absorbs more heat.” It creates what we call a positive feedback: something that reinforces the current climate forces that we have going on.” This is called the Albedo effect, and it’s bad news.

“We need to understand things for what they really are,” Verchot said. “The devil is in the details. “The big thing that people could take away from this study is that even if vegetation is increasing, it doesn’t mean we are solving problems,” he warned. “It could be a sign that things are getting worse.”

Planet Earth is actually getting greener — but that might not be a good thing