Heating alone won’t drive soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide — they need added carbon and nutrients to thrive. This finding challenges assumptions about how climate warming influences soil emissions.
Heating alone won’t drive soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide — they need added carbon and nutrients to thrive. This finding challenges assumptions about how climate warming influences soil emissions.
So, is this a good or a bad message for climate change?
On the one hand, it could point to man-made CO2 currently emitted being even higher than we think (as less is contributed by the warmed up soil), which would be bad.
On the other hand, this might reduce the risk of yet another runaway scenario where higher temperatures lead to higher emissions, again leading to higher temperatures (like there is for soils in cold climates and methane emissions).
So, although I am just now not sure how to interpret the results, still a very interesting study!
This result says nothing*. Carbon-poor soils will not release more CO2 under warming, since they are carbon-poor. But there are ~1670 petagrams of carbon under the Arctic permafrost (and a little more in Tibet), which could absolutely cause a runaway scenario. For comparison, the atmosphere has about 900 Pg of carbon.
* Okay, that’s too harsh. I’m sure this study will help refine the current equations, and could be useful in making local policies.
Sums up and confirms my impression of this.