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Our Atmosphere Is Leaking Oxygen and Scientists Don't Know Why (gizmodo.com)
The Earth's atmosphere has been leaking oxygen and scientists don't know why. Researchers discovered that over the past 800,000 years, atmospheric oxygen levels have dropped by 0.7 percent. How exactly did they discover the leak? By observing ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, which contain trapped air bubbles representing snapshots of our atmosphere over the past million-odd years. Gizmodo reports: By examining the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen isotopes within these cores, the researchers were able to pull out a trend: oxygen levels have fallen by 0.7 percent over the past 800,000 years, meaning sinks are roughly 2 percent larger than sources. Writing today in Science, the researchers offer a few possible explanations. For one, erosion rates appear to have sped up in recent geologic history, causing more fresh sediment to be exposed and oxidized by the atmosphere, causing more oxygen to be consumed. Long-term climate change could also be responsible. Recent human-induced warming aside, our planet's average temperature had been declining a bit over the past few million years. [Princeton University geologist Daniel Stolper] added that there could be other explanations, too, and figuring out which is correct could prove quite challenging. But learning what controls the knobs in our planet's oxygen cycle is worth the effort. It could help us understand what makes a planet habitable at all -- something scientists are rather keen on, given recent exoplanet discoveries. Stolper's analysis excluded one very unusual part of the record: the last 200 years of industrial human society. "We are consuming O2 at a rate a factor of a thousand times faster than before," Stolper said. "Humankind has completely short-circuited the cycle by burning tons of carbon."
Oxygen levels can't go up, where would the oxygen come from? It's very improbable that oxygen levels stay the same, over time nothing stays the same in nature. The only remaining option is that oxygen levels go down. Problem solved.
Change "suck" to "blow".
"A bit?" We have been in a continuous ice age for the past few million years. Even the more dire predictions of climate models barely take us back to the already fairly cold temperatures at the beginning of the Pliocene era.
We lost the combination to the air shield? Quick! Someone check their luggage! It might be the same combination.
We'll make great pets
Forests are responsible for a miniscule portion of oxygen production. The bulk comes from algae. There is not less algae in the world today. If anything, thanks to global warming, there is more.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
There is not less algae in the world today. If anything, thanks to global warming, there is more.
But UV has driven it subsurface where it does less respiration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Forests are responsible for a miniscule portion of oxygen production"
Algae certainly is the main source, but the amount the forests produce definately isn't miniscule.
What you don't know is that at the time the bible was written, people couldn't use numbers bigger than 6000 (they used some weird 13-bits counters). So the actual biblical year is 800,000 mod 6000 = 2,000.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
That's not climate, that's weather. I'm really sick of these so-called "scientists" pulling this alarmist "research" out of their statist asses to garner yet more of that sweet sweet government giveaway grant money. This isn't "science" -- reproducible results or it didn't happen. Until then, I say we drive it like we stole it.
Guess this is what we have to look forward to :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and also bonded to hyfrogen atoms
when you burn hydrocarbons you get H2O as well as CO2
Or we could just figure that more Oxygen is getting bound up in other compounds. Not a leak, possibly of some concern, but probably not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Algae is definitely the single big player producing 70-80% of available atmospheric oxygen overall, and trees are a fraction of the remaining 20-30% so they aren't the definitely go-to overall. However, for a study like this it would only require trees to be roughly 7% of global free O2 production for a 10%ish drop in available forests to equate to a 0.7% reduction in atmospheric O2 versus other molecules.
This wouldn't even take into account an increase in the amount of atmospheric oxygen ending up as other molecules due to the rapid increase in different forms of combustion.
I don't have any direct data on global O2 production by forests as a portion of the whole versus other plants beyond algae, nor any on the precise amount of deforestation as a percentage of the whole either, but the proportions required for parents description to be viable seem likely enough that it might be worth considering as a potential answer if anyone bothers looking into it.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Human population has expanded tremendously in the last part of those 800,000 years, and all of us consume oxygen. It probably can't explain the first 700,000 years, though, since total global hominid population was probably fairly constant, with one species supplanting another.
But what about methane? We know it leaks from places like hydrate ices underwater, especially when there is an earthquake and landslide, and of course since it exists underground as natural gas, we know it can leak from there, too, if an earthquake happens to rupture the ground enough. Methane is a light gas that will rise toward the stratosphere, and likely react in the ozone layer. I'm talking about a long term slow thing, not fast enough to deplete ozone as fast as solar ultraviolet makes more from atmospheric oxygen. But the reaction produces water and CO2, and takes oxygen out of the air.
More water than oil.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Adam Duritz, is that you?
Snark aside, this is exactly right. When it comes to climate science, we have lost all humility for what we do not yet know, which is a critical element of science.
That's what error bars are for.
Ezekiel 23:20
And iron, aluminium, silicon, and calcium atoms. Carbon and hydrogen are much less abundant than these.
Ezekiel 23:20
Its being sequestered. We can grow more plants to recover the oxygen.
Have gnu, will travel.
And iron, aluminium, silicon, and calcium atoms. Carbon and hydrogen are much less abundant than these.
Really? What planet are you posting from? Or are you a mole person?
-- Alastair
Fucking MAGNETS! How do they WoRk!? It is the End Of PersonKind!
THe End oF Human/Person/MonkeyKind has been documented with utter clarity. See it and weep.
(Future cell phones are worse than today.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Because if not, there is no way I can see that "leaked" is the right word.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
http://i.imgur.com/1kvpLb6.jpg Scifi seems to always come true
If this doesn't do it, you most likely don't have kids yet or never want them. And you somehow think the rest of your life will be free of hard consequences from the environment. The alternative is that you think something more basic will get you such as war or famine.
You would think that perhaps the massive deforestation of the planet over the course of the past 400-500 years might have an impact. Combine that with massive increases in combustion on the planet you would think that it would be unsurprising that more free O2 would be contained within CO/CO2/SO2 etc than in the past.
Course that's out of my ass, and I don't know how you'd go around testing it.
Deforestation by man over the past 800,000 years?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
You've left no room for bushes and grasses.
Bushes and grasses produce a lot of oxygen .
but it's not just oxygen production.
Offsetting use of a car for a year requires 5,000 pounds of woody material per year (not pure carbon he he but it is a lot of carbon).
Grass, bushes and algae do not lock up nearly as much carbon. Most of their carbon returns quickly to the environment as they are consumed and their smaller less sturdy bits rot quickly.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1. Many, many more people
2. Many, many more machines that use oxygen in one way or another (ICEs, for instance)
3. Destruction of natural oxygen generation (i.e., cutting down rainforests)
4. (speculative) Could thinning of the ozone layer make our atmosphere more permeable to loss?
An all of this (many, many more people, ICEs, cutting down rainforests) happened over the last 800,000 years?
If you're including recent figures, then you need to figure in that oceanic pollution is disrupting the life of plankton, which produce most of the oxygen in the atmosphere. I doubt that the figures are recent enough to reflect the recent plankton die-offs, but expect the Oxygen levels of the atmosphere to take a sharp dip over the next few centuries. (it's a pretty slow cycle.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Reduced isotope ratio does not *necessarily* mean that oxygen is "leaking". It could be trapped within compounds on the planet. Just as carbon levels have decreased due to carbon being fixed in other compounds.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Geological processes regularly turn around many kilometers of Earth's surface.
Ezekiel 23:20
Which has to with what, exactly? The article headline said *OUR* atmosphere was leaking oxygen.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
get the hydrogen, burn the hydrogen with oxygen, get no more free oxygen
FTFY
I come here for the love
Many people call the rain forests of the Amazon Basin the lungs of the earth. That hasn't stopped us (human beings) from slashing and burning it mercilessly for decades. If the inherent beauty of system and the species won't motivate us to stop, would preservation of what's left help with some of the environmental existential threats that face us? I'm not sure that the oxygen leakage is really an existential threat but it doesn't sound like an ideal trend, especially when combined with other factors. The overall sense I get is steady decline until we start really feeling it and wake up. It's not hard to imagine a perfect storm, and it's not impossible to imagine a semi-friendly wake up call such as people noticing it's actually getting harder to breathe, degrading to gasping for oxygen.
So they say gas bubbles trapped in frozen H2O had slightly more O2 than outside air?
Did they also have more H2?
Plusieurs députés importants ont exclu de servir dans son cabinet fantôme. Chuka Umunna est l’un d’entre eux. Il avertit, clairement agacé par les agissements des proches du leader, que les appels au rassemblement ne suffiront pas: L’unité ne viendra pas d’exigences, de menaces, de violences sur internet comme on en a vu Andy Burnham, une autre figure influente du Labour, prévient qu’il n’y aura pas de paix miraculeuse.e bataille à venir concernera la sélection des candidats pour les élections législatives. Les limites géographiques des circonscriptions sont en train d’être revues, et l’entourage de Jeremy Corbyn espère en profiter pour écarter quelques nike tn gêneurs et mettre en place ses propres candidats.Avec des militants qui l’ont élu deux fois en douze mois, le leader actuel se retrouve dans une position intouchable, au moins à court terme. Mais ramener la paix au sein du Labour risque d’être très difficile.
errors bars are totally ignored by politicians looking to "protect" from doom's day...
Having the humility to say "I know nothing" is actually being in the right mindset..
Are here, and scientists don't know why yet!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Bring in more oxygen. Plenty of sources to chose from, including: cometary ice, the Oort cloud, satellites of outer planets. Hard to say which is cheapest way to do it, at a fast enough pace. Bezos will probably pick some ways, Musk others.
Of course, there's that pesky hydrogen attached to it, but there's a solution to that: electrolysis powered by practical controlled fusion.
This has the advantage of producing helium as waste, which can be used for buoyancy of balloons, blimps, dirigibles, etc. When it escapes it'll just float up to the top of the atmosphere, and beyond.
And it will escape -- an atom at a time, because it's good at leading through surfaces and past fittings, or in bulk when the balloons pop or the buoyancy cells vent, or whatever -- eventually.
So, all we need to replace that lost oxygen is to become spacefaring (for the ice runs) and practical fusion power (which is only 15 to 25 years away, as it has been for about half a century).
At that rate of loss, we have time to work out the practical details.
I've done the hard part. You youngsters just have to work out those details.
(You're welcome.)
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Over the past 220 million years, the earth has suffered some catastrophes of which I recall two; the end of the Permian and Jurassic Eras. After each, the oxygen level was markedly lower. Back in the Permian days, it was around 36% and the carbon dioxide level was a lot higher, too. Animals and the plants they ate grew huge. The end of the Permian Era was a mega-disaster that wiped out about 99% of the species. The crocodilians and a few others survived; talk about tough! Something happened that caused a line of volcanoes to erupt across what is now Siberia. The end of the Jurassic was milder by comparison and there was another drop in oxygen level after that event. Since then, there has been a lot of competition for that 28% remaining oxygen and if it wasn't for volcanoes and plants, we'd be in a lot of trouble. The environment tends to sequester carbon dioxide as carbonates and lock them up in rocks and shells taking the oxygen along for the ride. But then, the occasional volcano belches a bunch of CO2 back in the air that the plants then turn into oxygen and carbohydrates. Conclusion: We need some more volcanoes.
Did anybody check to see if there is a gigantic vacuum cleaner in orbit?
Wouldn't that explain it? Or something similar.
I'm sure not only A) there are plenty of mechanisms whereby oxygen can get trapped and out of the system for a period of time until released again. Odds are it isn't going anywhere but just sequestered somehow for a bit. B) Just like trapped air bubbles may contain more oxygen, I'm sure the opposite is true as well, when upon their release would alter said system.
On top of that simple error. 0.07 percent *total*, when measuring the scale of "trapped air" bubbles. That sounds like a very small sample size to then ramp up to a total global atmosphere type assumptions. Could be that local conditions were particular to the small sample. Could also be that the material the air was trapped in contributed to the oxygen content depending on the definition of "Trapped"... Most things have a fair amount of permeability to them, and while they may block some things, not all depending on size etc...
At any rate early days by the sounds of it. Seems to be an inflamed title, "Oxygen levels dropping Scientists have no idea why! Would you like to know more?"
Could more accurately be described as scientists have observed in a small sample of trapped air that oxygen levels may have been greater in the past, and are unsure as to what is the best explanation for the slight difference. Less alarmist, and probably less readers.
Well, that took about 3 minutes. The paper is in Science. If you don't have a subscription, you'll need to try something like Sci-hub.
Abstract: The history of atmospheric O2 partial pressures (P-O2) is inextricably linked to the coevolution of life and Earthâ(TM)s biogeochemical cycles. Reconstructions of past P-O2 rely on models and proxies but often markedly disagree. We present a record of P-O2 reconstructed using O2 / N2 ratios from ancient air trapped in ice. This record indicates that P-O2 declined by 7 per mil (0.7%) over the past 800,000 years, requiring that O2 sinks were ~2% larger than sources. This decline is consistent with changes in burial and weathering fluxes of organic carbon and pyrite driven by either Neogene cooling or increasing Pleistocene erosion rates. The 800,000-year record of steady average carbon dioxide partial pressures (P-CO2) but declining P-O2 provides distinctive evidence that a silicate weathering feedback stabilizes P-CO2 on million-year time scales.
So, for starters, it's evident that the researchers (though not the non-geologists at Giz-wotsit) appreciate the difference between erosion (the mechanical break up and movement of rock) and weathering (the chemical alteration of the minerals that comprise that weathered rock). They're also well aware that with two processes in place, and a critical factor (temperature) being considerably variable in both time and space, then deconvolving what is actually going on is going to be quite difficult, if not impossible without more data (perhaps from looking at mineralogy variations in sediments deposited in different areas with different mean temperatures.
contrary to the impression that many people have got (I guess from Giz-thingy, the researchers were specifically not looking at air bubbles in the ice, but at air dissolved in the ice. "(ii) Only analyses of bubble-free ice with clathrates were considered. (para 3)" (Do I need to remind people that "clathrate" does not only mean "crystalline compound of hydrocarbon gases and water"? Probably.) They also look at the argon - nitrogen ratio to monitor for changes in the dissolution of oxygen, argon and nitrogen relative to each other due to changes in the immediate environment of the accumulating snowpack.
Could this be an artefact of measurement? Well, they've certainly considered (and rejected) that : "Our hypothesis is further supported by the observation that data from all four ice cores individually exhibit the same general trends and magnitudes of decreasing dO2 /N2 with time (table S3), even though each was drilled, stored, and analyzed differently." So, they think it's a genuine atmospheric change.
CO2 recorded in the cores does not change sufficiently or sufficiently consistently to explain the changes observed, so they ascribe a lot of the change to the weathering of pyrite - a reduced iron mineral - into oxidised iron salts ("rust", or iron-rich clays e.g. the glaucony/ glauconite familes).
There's a reason that people write papers, instead of using journalists to report their findings. It's because the details matter.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Where did I say that? Why is it impossible to have a normal conversation on this subject where you can process simple logic without spinning off into hyperbole? If you actually listen to climate scientists -- many of them anyway -- they are pretty damn reasonable about the limits of what we understand and sound a lot like me. But somehow I'm anti-science because I don't hold the position of hyperventilating politicians who wouldn't know science from a hole in the ground? Okay.