Physiological response curves may shift as soil microbiomes respond to drought. In the short term (minutes to days), physiological acclimation may help to sustain function, such as soil carbon decomposition. Over weeks to decades, community shifts and evolution could alter response curves to maintain functioning under dry conditions. Broken lines indicate potential variation in the breadth of the shifted response curves. Graphic: Evans, et al., 2022 / Functional Ecology

Droughts destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land: study – If more carbon-releasing microbes survive than carbon-sequestering microbes, we could end up with carbon-depleted soils

By Mark Waghorn 12 April 2023 (SWNS) – Droughts are destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land, according to new research. Soil stores more greenhouse gas than plants and the atmosphere combined – thanks to the microbes that live in it. Moisture plays a key role in the process. Lack of rainfall is disrupting this […]

Natural climate solutions aren’t enough – “There is still an emissions gap that requires decarbonizing energy and industry”

By Rob Jordan 28 February 2019 (Stanford Report) – In the fight to slow climate change, nature is a powerful weapon. In fact, natural climate solutions, such as reducing deforestation and changing farming practices, can soak up excess carbon in the atmosphere and prevent certain emissions so effectively that it might be tempting to think […]

America conquest cooled Earth’s climate – The Great Dying of the indigenous peoples of the Americas contributed to the Little Ice Age

By Jonathan Amos 31 January 2019 (BBC News) – Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth’s climate. That’s the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK. The team says the disruption that followed European settlement led to a huge swathe of abandoned agricultural […]

Climate tipping point could be coming sooner than we think – “Should the land reach a maximum carbon uptake rate, global warming could accelerate”

By Holly Evarts 23 January 2019 New York, NY (Columbia University) – Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018, rising by an estimated 3.4 percent in the U.S. alone. This trend is making scientists, government officials, and industry leaders more anxious than ever about the future of our planet. As United Nations Secretary General […]

Policymakers are not adequately factoring land use and human diets into climate mitigation strategies – “The fundamental problem is that policymakers and researchers have not truly confronted the fact that global land area is limited”

4 January 2019 (Mongabay) – A recent study finds that governments and researchers routinely underestimate the potential for changes to land use and human diets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of global warming. Published in Nature last month, the research suggests that policymakers are not adequately accounting for the amount of […]

Scientists say halting deforestation “just as urgent” as reducing emissions – “Our planet’s future climate is inextricably tied to the future of its forests”

By Oliver Milman 4 October 2018 (The Guardian) – The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels. Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 […]

The trouble with climate feedbacks – A posthumous plea from astronaut Piers Sellers

By Adam Voiland 19 July 2018 (NASA) – Astronaut and scientist Piers Sellers is no longer with us, but his words still resonate.A posthumous plea from Sellers arrived in July 2018 in the form of an article in PNAS. The topic was one that he cared deeply about: building a better space-based system for observing […]

Why current negative-emissions strategies remain “magical thinking”

21 February 2018 (Nature) – Decarbonization of the world’s economy would bring colossal disruption of the status quo. It’s a desire to avoid that change — political, financial and otherwise — that drives many of the climate sceptics. Still, as this journal has noted numerous times, it’s clear that many policymakers who argue that emissions […]

Sumatra region heats up as rainforests are razed for palm oil plantations – “The land use change does not only impact biodiversity and stored carbon, but also has a surface warming effect, adding to climate change”

By Hans Nicholas Jong 29 October 2017(Mongabay) – The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may also be driving an alarming rise in temperatures on the ground, a new study suggests. Average temperatures […]

300 million years ago, the formation of coal almost turned Earth into a snowball – “By burning the coal, the CO2 is again destabilizing the Earth system”

10 October 2017 (PIK) – While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat, about 300 million years ago the formation of that same coal brought our planet close to global glaciation. For the first time, scientists show the massive effect in a study published in the renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences. When […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial