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.
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.