Ice cores allow climate researchers to look 800,000 years back in time: atmospheric carbon acts as fertilizer, increasing biological production.
Ice cores allow climate researchers to look 800,000 years back in time: atmospheric carbon acts as fertilizer, increasing biological production. The mechanism removes carbon from the air and thereby dampens the acceleration in global warming.
Even under ice age conditions will plants, plankton, and other life forms be able to increase production whenever atmospheric carbon concentrations rise. The mechanism will not prevent an ongoing trend of global warming, but at least dampen the acceleration. This conclusion stems from an international collaboration involving the Physics of Ice Climate Earth (PICE) center of Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, just published in the scientific journal Science.
“Global biosphere production through photosynthesis is the strongest absorbing flux of atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is therefore essential to understand its natural variability for a better projection of the future carbon cycle,” says Postdoc researcher Ji-Woong Yang, PICE, continuing:
“Nowadays, as we have Earth observation satellites and other advanced equipment, the mechanism of carbon fertilization is well established. However, we were not sure that the same mechanism existed in past periods where the climate was very different and atmospheric carbon concentrations much lower. The new results confirm the existence of the strong correlation and allow us to model future developments with more confidence.”
Read more at University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science
Image: In collaboration with Laboratoire des Science du Climat et de l’Environnement, France, the PICE team has studied the ancient air trapped inside tiny air bubbles in an Antarctic ice core. (Photo Credit: S. Kipfstuhl, AWI)
