Carbon-Emitting Soil Could Speed Global Warming, Warns 26-Year Study (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quote the Guardian: Warming soil releases more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, suggesting a potentially disastrous feedback mechanism whereby increases in global temperatures will trigger massive new carbon releases in a cycle that may be impossible to break... The 26-year study is one of the biggest of its kind, and is a groundbreaking addition to our scant knowledge of exactly how warming will affect natural systems. Potential feedback loops, or tipping points, have long been suspected to exist by scientists, and there is some evidence for them in the geological record. What appears to happen is that once warming reaches a certain point, these natural biological factors kick in and can lead to a runaway, and potentially unstoppable, increase in warming...

In the Science study, researchers examined plots of soil in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, a mixed hardwood forest in the U.S. They experimented by heating some of the plots with underground cables to 5C above normal levels, leaving others as a control. The long-term study revealed that in the first 10 years there was a strong increase in the carbon released from the heated plots, then a period of about seven years when the carbon release abated. But after this second calmer period, which the scientists attribute to the adjustment of the soil microbes to the warmer conditions, the release of carbon resumed its upward path. From 1991, when the experiment began, the plots subjected to 5C warming lost about 17% of the carbon that had been stored in the top 60cm of the soil, where the greatest concentration of organic matter is to be found...
Lead scientist Jerry Melillo, points out that currently 10 billion metric tons of carbon gets released into the atmosphere every year, but "The world's soils contain about 3,500 billion tons of carbon. If a significant amount of that is added to the atmosphere, due to microbial activity, that will accelerate the global warming process. Once this self-reinforcing feedback begins, there is no easy way to turn it off. There is no switch to flip."

Comments

Re:Wow, that's a long term study

[blindseer]

To the deniers: If we agree on nothing else can we at least agree on continuing to fund well planned scientific studies on the climate?

But... Al Gore and Arnold Shrwartzenwhatever told me the debate was over.

It's not just the "deniers" that want to stop the research.

If the politicians were serious about an "all the above" solution to solving the problems of CO2 producing fuels then they'd be funding research into nuclear power, fission and fusion. Since they are not I must conclude that global warming is not a problem.

If the problem of nuclear power was the waste it produces then we'd see the federal government follow through on the nuclear waste deposit that they've held up for 30 years. Since they haven't then nuclear waste must not be a problem.

Which is it? Is global warming an end of life event that can only be averted by eliminating CO2 production? Or, is nuclear power such a greater threat that we'd rather see all life end from global warming first? If we can wait for solar power and "giga-batteries" to replace coal then global warming doesn't seem like an immediate problem.

You want me to agree that global warming is a problem? Then agree with me that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution. If you fear nuclear power more than global warming then you are telling me that global warming is not a problem.

Two things are crippling America: poor basic education in some parts of America due to widely uneven funding based on local communities resources (kinda defeats the idea of giving the next generation a fair chance).

The declining state of education in America seems to coincide with the creation of a federal government department dedicated with "helping" it. Maybe less government is in order.

The other is legalized corruption by allowing unlimited corporate donations to politicians; for example this has resulted in American health care costs being more than twice that of the next country in the entire world! (With worse outcomes)

People talk about how "untrammeled capitalism" is ruining everything but get real quiet when asked just how "trammeled" it needs to be. Health care is a mess because of government intervention. If you want prices to go down then open up competition, let people buy insurance across state lines. Don't make people buy it. If it's against the law to go without insurance then the insurance companies can charge whatever they like because you have to pay the price no matter how high it is. If there is a fine to go without insurance then guess what will inevitably happen, the prices will rise to the cost of the fine. Is that too hard to understand?

Re:No one ever talks about cooling

[Slugster]

Well you are just being a unsmart person, mister dumbly-dumbo.
Climate change is now a totally proven factological theory, and it's also known to be 100% true. It's why all the bad weather happens, because Al Gore said so. What are you, stupid or something?

What about rain?

[randomErr]

Wouldn;t the cycle be:

* Carbon builds up and increase heat
* Ocean evaperate
* Carbon and other particalate form clouds
* Rain scrubs out the carbon and the cycle resets

Also, are we coming out the Little Ice Age? So the heating is mostly natural?