Climate Projections Don't Accurately Reflect Soil Carbon Release

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A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don't adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.

A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don't adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.

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The study points out that many global models make estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from soils based on "average" projected temperatures. But temperatures vary widely from those averages. That variability, along with complex biological processes, makes the issue far more complicated.

Researchers said that climate projections, in general, don't effectively incorporate into their calculations a major component of global warming -- the enormous amounts of carbon found in dead, decaying organic matter, which represent up to three times the amount of carbon in Earth's live vegetation.

The study was just published in the journal Biogeosciences by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and other institutions.

"We've done a pretty good job of determining how much carbon is getting absorbed by growing trees and vegetation, how much is coming in," said Mark Harmon, professor and holder of the Richardson Chair in Forest Science at OSU, and one of the world's leading experts on the effect of decomposition on Earth's carbon cycle.

"However, we know much less about how carbon is released to the atmosphere through the process of decomposition, how much is going out," he said. "This is half of the equation, and there's just a huge amount we don't know about it."

Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110602122300.htm

Photo credit: http://crawford.tardigrade.net/journal/album7309.html