Forests 'held their breath' during global warming hiatus, research shows

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https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_565517_en.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Forests ‘held their breath’ during global warming hiatus, research shows[/font]
[font size=4]Global forest ecosystems, widely considered to act as the lungs of the planet, ‘held their breath’ during the most recent occurrence of a warming hiatus, new research has shown.[/font]

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The researchers, including Professor Pierre Friedlingstein from the University of Exeter, demonstrated that the global carbon sink – where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored in the natural environment – was particularly robust during this 14-year period.

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It revealed that the total amount of carbon taken up by land ecosystems slowed during periods of rapid warming, and sped up during periods of slower warming.

More significantly, the team demonstrated that while rates of photosynthesis remained constant during the periods of slower warming, the forests released less carbon back into the atmosphere – meaning the Earth is storing much more carbon during these warming hiatuses.

“The global carbon sink has been surprisingly strong during the period from 1998 to 2012, and we now begin to understand the causal mechanisms”, says Ashley Ballantyne of University of Montana, and lead author of the new research. Pekka Kauppi, a forest ecologist from Helsinki University and co-author, added the results were “As if forests have been holding their breath”.

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Date: 23 January 2017[/font]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3204

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1. Climate Change Paper Studies Carbon Uptake in Ecosystems

http://news.umt.edu/2017/01/012317carb.php

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Climate Change Paper Studies Carbon Uptake in Ecosystems[/font]

January 24, 2017

[font size=3]MISSOULA – A new paper out Jan. 23 in the journal Nature Climate Change by University of Montana researcher Ashley Ballantyne delves into one of the great uncertainties in predicting future climate.

“Will ecosystems take up more carbon or release more carbon as the climate changes?” Ballantyne said. “This is a key question in trying to predict what the climate might look like in the future.”

Together with former UM doctoral student William Smith, Ballantyne investigated the sensitivity of these carbon feedbacks. While carbon dioxide has increased steadily over the last 50 years, the Earth’s temperatures have increased in an erratic stair-step pattern due to redistribution of energy in the Earth system.

“We were curious to learn how Earth’s carbon cycle responded during periods of rapid warming and periods of less rapid warming,” Ballantyne said. “We discovered that the amount of carbon taken up by land ecosystems slows during periods of rapid warming and speeds up during periods of slower warming.”

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