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.
pstarr wrote: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 driversWe 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.
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.
pstarr wrote:Atmospheric CO2 increases have leveled out in recent years.
study wrote:Without effective reduction of global CO2 emissions, however, future climate change remains a stark reality.
Linked article & Berkeley Lab wrote:“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.”
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.
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
pstarr wrote: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.
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.
pstarr wrote:Why is this good news, happy news is roundly ignored?
pstarr wrote: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
pstarr wrote: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.
For 12 years, plants bought us extra time on climate changeoceans 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.”
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.pstarr wrote: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
Global Carbon BudgetCO2 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%.
Warmer temperatures also result in plants releasing more c02.pstarr wrote:Furthermore warmer temperatures contribute, not detract from plant growth.
This is incorrect: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.
Plants release up to 30 per cent more CO2 than previously thoughtA 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.
Even soil feels the heat: Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warmsTwenty 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.
For 12 years, plants bought us extra time on climate changemore CO2 means warmer temperatures, and warmer temperatures cause ecosystems — plants, trees, and even bacteria in soil — to release more CO2 back into atmosphere.
This statement is correct. However it does not invalidate any of the studies I linked to.pstarr wrote:Yet the planet has warmed and there's more, not less vegetation.
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.pstarr wrote:So can those studies kub. They need a rewrite
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.pstarr wrote: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.
Greening the Planet: The Fertilizer Effect of CO2 Slows WarmingThe 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.”
Planet Earth is actually getting greener — but that might not be a good thing“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.”
Return to Environment, Weather & Climate
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests