Latest Carbon cycle Stories

Key players in carbon cycle multiply slowly when overheatedIn dark, rich soils on every continent, microbes dealing with the effects of climate change aren't accelerating global warming the way scientists had predicted, a study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine, Colorado State University and Yale University shows.Results of the study appear in a paper published on-line this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation...

Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened 'the black box' of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon...

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. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in the March 24 issue of Nature.The scientists also calculated the total amount of carbon dioxide flowing from soils, which is about 10-15 percent higher than previous measurements. That number -- about 98 petagrams of...

BOSTON, Mass. -- Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We hear this mantra time and again. When it comes to carbon"¹the "Most Wanted" element in terms of climate change"¹nature has got reuse and recycle covered. However, it's up to us to reduce. Scientists at Harvard Medical School are trying to meet this challenge by learning more about the carbon cycle, that is, the process by which carbon moves from the atmosphere into plants, oceans, soils, the earth's crust, and back into the atmosphere...

Two studies provide clearer picture of how carbon cycle was dramatically affected long agoGeoengineering -- deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate to slow or reverse global warming -- has gained a foothold in the climate change discussion. But before effective action can be taken, the Earth's natural biogeochemical cycles must be better understood.Two Northwestern University studies, both published online recently by Nature Geoscience, contribute new -- and related -- clues as to what...

The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated."Climate models must take this carbon sink into account," says Mario Lebrato, lead author of the study. The work was done when he was at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and affiliated with the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES); he is...

Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.Moustafa Chahine, the instrument's science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., unveiled the new product at a briefing on recent breakthroughs...

Deep-sea ecosystems occupying 60% of the Earth's surface could be vulnerable to the effects of global warming warn scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."Global-scale models are now estimating that climate change will affect the supply of organic matter from surface waters upon which most deep-sea ecosystems depend," says co-author Dr Henry Ruhl of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.Most scientists believe that the burning of fossil...

New study shows that Arctic has potential to alter Earth's climateIn a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25 percent of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Under current predictions of global warming, this Arctic sink could be diminished or reversed, potentially accelerating predicted rates of climate change.In their review paper, David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the...

You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues reported Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science."The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today "” and were sustained at those levels "” global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was...