Tropical rainforests are called the lungs of the earth, because they suck in pollution and breath out clean, healthy air. There is a darker side to this story, though -- without protection, these same forests could actually speed up global warming.
A new paper from a team of British and Brazilian researchers has some worrying news about the Amazon rainforest, the biggest single lung on the planet. It describes how last year's drought left some areas as dry as a tinderbox.
The thing is, this happened in 2005 too. Back then the drought was described as a once in a hundred year event, but then it happened again.
The new study shows how these dry spells are really bad news for the trees, and many are dying. They then stop absorbing carbon dioxide and start pumping out gases as they burn or rot away. And so we get into a kind of vicious circle.
Climate science tells us that we'll be seeing more droughts like this, more often. And if the rainforest starts breathing out more than it's absorbing, then the forests begin to contribute to the problem they help solve today.
So far, so grim, but there are reasons for hope. Deforestation in the Amazon is falling, due in part to new agreements from the big players in the leather world (like Nike and Timberland) not to buy from ranchers who are cutting down the forest to graze cows. Larger chunks of rainforest are much better at withstanding drought, and so this drop in deforestation matters.
Every nation on earth also has a stake in this. By cutting carbon pollution down instead of trees, we can help to slowly stabilize the world's climate and preserve the rainforests that are left.
Right now the world's ancient rainforests are on our side in the fight against climate change. They can mop up a huge amount of our pollution, but there is a limit. It's time for us to realize that this deal cuts two ways.
Follow Philip Radford on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Phil_Radford
Rainforest can't be lung of the earth.
I hope you and author must understand this simple equation.
Note to Newt: thank you.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090517143334.htm
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/02/bacteria_clouds
Is there a clear statistical trend of more extreme weather? No, I don't think so. And I hope there never is. But I think there will be unless we change direction and get off of fossil fuels, which we need to do anyway because there is a finite supply of them. The only thing is, we need to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible.
So as unscientific as it may be, I am alarmed by the following list. Because regardless of whether we can attribute these to global warming or not, they are the type of events that are predicted for our future based on our current trajectory. More and more of these extreme events is not the world I want to leave for my children or yours.
To use an analogy, we don't wait until we get to the stop sign to put on the brakes. And we don't test the hypothesis that stop signs are irrelevant by ignoring them.
2005: Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster, killing at least 1,836 people with damages estimated at $81 billion
2007: Frequency Of Atlantic Hurricanes Doubled Over Last Century. Science Daily.
2008: Natural Disasters Up More Than 400 Percent in Two Decades
2009: Georgia floods 'epic': According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the floods were a "once in 500 years flood,"
2009: Death Toll Rises to 222 in Indian Floods -1.5 million have been displaced - CBS
2010: Deadly China floods called worst in decade - At least 700 people have been killed and millions displaced. Well over half of China's provinces are endured monsoon-like downpours, flooding and landslides
2010: The worst floods in Pakistan's history affected 14 million people, with floodwater reaching Sindh province, officials say.
2010: Russia's record heat wave may already have taken 15000 lives and cost the economy $15 billion as fires and drought ravage the country. Russia stopped exporting grain.
2010: Calif. rain shatters records, and more is coming - FOX
2010: Mudslides in Brazil. Death toll 1,000
2010: Floods in Germany
2011: Floods in Australia
2011: One of the most powerful cyclones on record slammed into Australia's northeast coast on Thursday
2011: (Reuters) - World food prices hit a record in January and recent catastroph¬ic weather around the globe could put yet more pressure on the cost of food
2010: Drought in China: NYT
2010 Flooding in southern hemisphere
2011 Philippines under water. Death toll 57
2011 Sri Lanka flooded. 40 people killed
2011 floods in January: Malawi, Malaysia, Mozambique, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0502.htm One feature of the Amazon rainforest missing from this discussion are lateritic soils. These heavily weathered, clay acidic soils are poor nutirent holders. The vast majority of nutrients are tied up in the vegetation. When lateritic soils are are exposed to the sun, they bake like concrete, require large fertilizer imputs for crops and last only a couple of years for crop production.
http://www3.ufpa.br/projetomineracao/docs/estrut/arq11-social.pdf The history of pig iron production in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and the resulting destruction of the rainforest for steel
http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/revenge-of-the-rainforest-1638524.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=eCplelCvA00C&pg=PA615&lpg=PA615&dq=is+the+amazon+rainforest+a+net+producer+of+co2&source=bl&ots=gHWilz_891&sig=H1APTD5zZk448rXtaTYIBPSWVSM&hl=en&ei=T8RWTfzOBsG2tgfp8_jHDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
acting in tandem , "forgive them , they know not what they do "
Thank you Mr Radford for your years of dedicated service .
That said, however, the net change in a CO2 budget associated with burning primary forest and replacing it with farmland or grazing IS significant, for obvious reasons. That is the real reason why we want to be conserving the Amazon, not because it 'soaks up air pollution'.
The places that are true carbon sinks, and thus responsible for the oxygen in the atmosphere, are marine sediments, bogs, and soils where the amount of carbon in is greater than the amount of carbon out, or at least where large amounts of carbon are withheld at any given time from rotting, which concomitantly allows a large atmospheric reservoir of oxygen- the molecule of oxygen that is created per organic molecule created is able to evade being destroyed again by rotting away that molecule of organic matter back to CO2.
Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/12/sea-co2-climate-japan-environment
As for the Amazon, it is regarded as a 'carbon sink' :
The Amazon, which acts as a 'carbon sink' - absorbing billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere - was hit by a "once a in century" drought in 2005. Only five years later, the 2010 drought may have been even more devastating, according to rainfall analysis by researchers from the UK and Brazil. This is leading to concerns that the area will release more carbon than it absorbs.
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20110207/scientists-fear-drought-could-reverse-039-carbon-sink-039-effect-amazon.htm
Second of all, yes the oceans both release and absorb enormous quantities of CO2, simply through the equilibration of CO2-rich newly upwelled deep water with the atmosphere, and through the equilibration of 'old' surface water in the mixed layer with the atmosphere; and finally, the large amounts of primary productivity convert Co2 to organic matter, a lot of which sinks to the sediment and is not rapidly reoxidized to CO2- thus it is a sink. But in the long term, this seawater-atmosphere system is in steady state, to my understanding, so even though the anthropogenic term is relatively small in comparison to the natural absorption and release, it is not part of that steady-state system and so the anthropogenic term is problematic.
However, in point of fact, the idea of rainforests as carbon sinks was never actually well-established, even in the scientific literature. The original studies failed to take into account all of the relevant fluxes of air into and out of the forest. I have sat in on scientific talks (yes, by professional scientists, at a university) where this was presented; unfortunately, I can't provide a journal reference to that, but this also addresses the topic: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/1051-0761(2002)012[0003:ATFAIC]2.0.CO;2
It's simple math, really- old-growth rainforests are not increasing in biomass, and their soils are rapidly recycled, so hence there is no net carbon uptake, no carbon sink.
also, this is incorrect, by more than a few orders of magnitude. 8.4 million tons? 840 million? not sure which but that would be more accurate
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."
~H.L. Mencken
http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/
It's the EPA's job to help ensure our air is protected.
Go get your own air supply, live in a bubble, and you can put whatever you want into your own air.
F&F
"Atmospheric reanalyses have proven to be useful tools for synthesizing diverse and irregularly spaced atmospheric observations into internally consistent gridded data sets."
i.e. you take the historical data you have and interpolate to get a data set that is organized into a nice neat set of buckets that are better suited for feeding into analytical tools.
Input: historical data taken at various time intervals and miscellaneous locations
Output: best estimate of what the data would look like if taken at regular intervals and regular geographical spacing.
A good description of the re-analysis concept can be found here: http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/cassano/Projects/grebis/
Lynas, M. 2008. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. National Geographic, Washington, D.C., 335 pp.
There is also a National Geographic TV program based on the book titled "Six Degrees Could Change The World."
I invite you to look either of them up.
Where did you read THIS?
When you try to explain everything, you explain nothing. Good 'ole Al.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIW_0ho2tfU