According to a recent study, they can accelerate
how atmospheric carbon moves into the deep ocean.
Ultimately, such studies will lead to a complete understanding of
how atmospheric carbon dioxide is captured and transformed by ocean surfaces, a crucial role in the carbon cycle.
By analyzing boron in shells accumulated over more than 2 million years, Hönisch was able to reconstruct in unprecedented detail
how atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have changed over time.
A crucial reason why the study of freshwater acidification has lagged until now is because determining
how atmospheric carbon affects these ecosystems requires complex modeling, and is much less clear than that occurring in oceans, according to study author Linda Weiss, an aquatic ecologist at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
Not exact matches
The study concludes that incorporating this new insight into soil models will improve our understanding of
how soils influence
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global climate.
This will reveal both the signatures of
atmospheric ingredients such as water, methane, and
carbon dioxide, and also
how heat flows from the planet's dayside to its nightside.
The model also considered
how reducing soot could impact other
atmospheric emissions, including sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and organic
carbon.
But the
carbon dynamic in these forests is not fully understood, making it difficult to know
how well this plan is reducing
atmospheric levels of CO2.
To explain this apparent paradox, the researchers called upon a theory for
how the global
carbon cycle,
atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth's temperature are linked on geologic timescales.
Those techniques have led to everything from the development of catalysts that remove poisonous
carbon monoxide from car exhaust to the understanding of
how ice crystals in stratospheric clouds supercharge
atmospheric chlorine's ability to destroy the planet's protective ozone layer.
«The Paleocene - Eocene thermal maximum has stood out as a striking, but contested, example of
how 21st - century - style
atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup can affect climate, environments and ecosystems worldwide,» says Bowen, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
This new research helps to establish
how coastal waters influence
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and, in turn, climate.
Although the earth has experienced exceptional warming over the past century, to estimate
how much more will occur we need to know
how temperature will respond to the ongoing human - caused rise in
atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily
carbon dioxide.
Since 1956, when the monitoring of
atmospheric CO2 concentrations began at Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO), many more stations have been added to measure the amount of
carbon in the atmosphere and
how it varies seasonally and geographically.
Gilbert explains that without a reliable method to detect missing wood, you can not understand
how trees are contributing to or moderating increasing levels of global
atmospheric carbon, or
how apparently healthy forests and tree species are responding to shifts in climate.
To test his idea, Salzmann used a computer model of the Earth system to find out
how the climate would react to a doubling of the
atmospheric carbon - dioxide concentration.
We have no idea, for example,
how much of the
atmospheric carbon being absorbed by the surface of the oceans reaches the bottom, nor
how long that takes.
«OCO - 2 was designed to help locate and identify natural regional processes that serve as sources and sinks of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, and
how these vary with time and location,» explained Annmarie Eldering, a NASA scientist working on the mission.
There is, therefore, much current interest in
how coccolithophore calcification might be affected by climate change and ocean acidification, both of which occur as
atmospheric carbon dioxide increases.
Figuring out just
how long the continent has been a barren, cold desert of ice can give clues as to
how Antarctica responded to the effects of past climates and can perhaps also indicate what to expect there in the future as Earth's
atmospheric concentration of
carbon dioxide grows.
They were Jorge Sarmiento, an oceanographer at Princeton University who constructs ocean - circulation models that calculate
how much
atmospheric carbon dioxide eventually goes into the world's oceans; Eileen Claussen, executive director of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change in Washington, D.C.; and David Keith, a physicist with the University of Calgary in Alberta who designs technological solutions to the global warming problem.
«If we want to predict more precisely
how human perturbation is going to impact
atmospheric CO2, and therefore climate, we have to better understand
how forests take up and release
carbon.»
Receding Himalayan glaciers Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single - topic issue on energy for Scientific American that included an article by Princeton University's Robert Socolow that set out a well - reasoned plan for
how to keep
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet - livable threshold of 560 ppm.
Using specially developed model configurations, the team studies
how Arctic whitening would be expected to play out in a world with four times the preindustrial amount of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, and an Arctic that is about 10 degrees Celsius hotter (18 degrees Fahrenheit).
Climate change scenarios are based on projections of future greenhouse gas (particularly
carbon dioxide) emissions and resulting
atmospheric concentrations given various plausible but imagined combinations of
how governments, societies, economies, and technologies will change in the future.
The definition uses
atmospheric databases called HITRAN (high - resolution transmission molecular absorption) and HITEMP (high - temperature spectroscopic absorption parameters) that characterize planetary atmospheres in light of
how both
carbon dioxide and water are absorbed.
As summarized by geoscientist James Kasting in his 2010 book «
How to Find a Habitable Planet»,» [h] abitable zones around Sun - like (F, G, and Early K) stars should be relatively wide because of the natural feedback between
atmospheric CO2 [
carbon dioxide] levels and climate — the same feedback loop that kept the Earth habitable early its history.
Here's
how it works: Grass plants convert solar energy (and
atmospheric carbon dioxide) into plant biomass, and the cow synthesizes that plant material into her own energy via the cellulose - digesting microbes in her rumen.
These changes alter the biospheric
carbon cycle, and can significantly affect
how much
carbon is cycled through plant matter, in turn causing changes in
atmospheric CO2.
In part, my article, «
How We Ran Out of Airtime,» considers the current human - generated
carbon dioxide buildup in relation to a tumultuous period of
atmospheric disruption triggered by another life form some 2.4 billion years ago.
I will give this question another shot - Critical to
how significant a grassland management scheme is to sequestering
atmospheric carbon is the maximum
carbon that can be stored / acre and what is the half - life of
carbon in the soil.
You may wish to check these out yourself, Fred, to get a better picture of
how the natural
carbon cycle is responding to higher
atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
If you accept that
carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human fossil fuel use is now the dominant contributor to
atmospheric CO2 changes, then knowing
how much global temperatures respond to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is important for understanding the future climate.
Ignoring the physics of the problem —
how the asserted heat was transferred from
atmospheric carbon dioxide, through the sea surface, and beyond the first mile of ocean waters, without being detected — they expect us to believe that fluid thermodynamics is akin to magic.
The study shows that satellite observations of
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are a useful tool toward understanding
how semiarid ecosystems will respond to climate change in the future.
Historical temperature time series and series of
atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements show clearly
how climate has changed over the past 100 years.
Saying «
How much warming will a doubling of
atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce?»
What is concerning is the possibility that rapid global warming could occur faster than many people believe is possible, if global warming due to
atmospheric carbon dioxide causes the Earth's atmosphere to warm enough to release enormous deposits of frozen methane (CH4) that are stored in the permafrost above the Arctic Circle and in frozen methane ice, known as methane hydrate, underneath the floors of the oceans throughout the world (see:
How Methane Gas Releases Due To Global Warming Could Cause Human Extinction).
Joanie Kleypas is a marine scientist at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, who investigates
how rising
atmospheric carbon dioxide is affecting marine ecosystems.
1)
How much warming will an increase in
atmospheric carbon dioxide cause directly?
Even if we could discriminate between human - originated CO2 and natural CO2 isotopically with reliability I don't see
how carbon isotope measurements could prove we have increased
atmospheric CO2 by 40 % anyway (or 110ppm) because, problematically, CO2 has a very short
atmospheric residence time.
It's early days, but this first real - world measurement of a slowdown in the ocean's ability to dissolve
carbon could have worrying implications for those currently thinking about
how to stabilize
atmospheric greenhouse levels.
Using a crop model they compared
how well spring wheat in China and groundnuts in West Africa would grow under these scenarios when compared to a third «control» scenario that holds
atmospheric carbon dioxide at 440ppm.
Although the earth has experienced exceptional warming over the past century, to estimate
how much more will occur we need to know
how temperature will respond to the ongoing human - caused rise in
atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily
carbon dioxide.
If you had said in the first place that you don't understand
how a specific estimate is made of the extent of global warming to be expected from a specified increase in
atmospheric carbon dioxide, I would not have tried to offer an explanation, because I don't understand that either.
It is common knowledge that climate is affected by
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, but what can be less obvious is
how carbon dioxide is affected by the climate.
What's new here is the application of a detailed version of one of the world's premier climate system models, the CCSM, to understand
how rising levels of
atmospheric carbon dioxide affected conditions in the world's oceans and land surfaces enough to trigger a massive extinction hundreds of millions of years ago.»
Our DOE Comment focuses entirely on the new science concerning the equilibrium climate sensitivity, that is,
how much the earth's average surface temperature will increase from a doubling of the
atmospheric carbon dioxide content.
Also, while we have good
atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as
carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by
how much
atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in - situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor.»
Secretary Kerry should not use the SEIS to duck the significance of the U.S. National Interest Determination for whether, or
how much, of what has been termed the tar sands «
carbon bomb» stays in the ground or is ultimately added to the
atmospheric concentration of
carbon dioxide.