Here’s another reason to pay close attention to microbes: Current climate models probably overestimate the amount of carbon that will be released from soil into the atmosphere as global temperatures rise, according to research from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Scientists will have to find alternative explanations for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age as researchers prove definitively that climate change - commonly assumed to be responsible - could not have been the culprit.
"The Kyoto Protocol has not met the expectations. Currently, global emissions are at a more than 50% higher level than during the Protocol’s reference year, 1990. In the light of current trends and the annual increase in emissions being around 2.5% on average, global emissions have been assumed to double by 2030.
A vast majority of scientists believe that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate and that human activity is almost certainly the dominant cause. But on the topics of response and mitigation, there is far less consensus.
Reducing or eliminating tillage is one of the farming practices most frequently touted to improve carbon sequestration in soil. A new study by INRA and Arvalis-Institut du Végétal turns this paradigm on its head. This study, the result of a rigorous experiment conducted in the Ile-de-France region, shows that after a period of 41 years, three tillage methods led to similar carbon sequestration outcomes. However, variations were apparent over time based on climate conditions.
With the impact of climate change becoming more and more uncomfortably obvious, UCLA researchers are focused on making Los Angeles a sustainable model for other cities. At a climate change conference on campus today, UCLA researchers and other speakers are discussing the challenges facing cities around the world.
Arctic sea ice has diminished significantly in recent decades, particularly in summer. Researchers from Norway and China have collaborated on developing an autonomous buoy with instruments that can more precisely measure the optical properties of Arctic sea ice while also taking measurements of ice thickness and temperature.
Ocean acidification might alter climate-relevant functions of the oceans’ uppermost layer, according to a study by a group of marine scientists published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans”.
A new climate change modeling tool developed by scientists at Indiana University, Princeton University and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration finds that carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere owing to greater plant growth from rising CO2 levels will be partially offset by changes in the activity of soil microbes that derive their energy from plant root growth.
While computer models churn out bleak forecasts for the planet’s future, we also have a more conceptual understanding of what is happening as humans pump carbon dioxide into the air. But the conceptual understanding of carbon dioxide wrapping the planet in a blanket that traps more heat is not quite right.
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