Sentences with phrase «land carbon sink»

With continuous global warming, the scientists expect the changing water cycle to become the critical factor for the variability in the global land carbon sink.

«The region's land carbon sink contributes to the sequestration of a significant percentage of the global emissions,» he said.

The findings suggest that overestimates of China's emissions during this period may be larger than China's estimated total forest sink — a natural carbon store — in 1990 - 2007 (2.66 gigatonnes of carbon) or China's land carbon sink in 2000 - 2009 (2.6 gigatonnes of carbon).

The net land carbon sink for northern Eurasia amounts to approximately 0.48 petagram of carbon per year, about 6.5 percent of global carbon emissions, according to Rawlins.

The research, carried out by an international team of climate scientists including Professors Pierre Friedlingstein and Stephen Sitch from the University of Exeter, has revealed new clues on how land carbon sinks are regulated on both local and global scales.

So, as carbon dioxide continued to rise, its fertilising effect on plants continued but respiration weakened for a while, strengthening the overall land carbon sink.

If the recent «slowdown» in global surface warming is reversing, the stronger land carbon sink seen in recent years may weaken again, and the rise in CO2 may quicken again.

A greening semi-arid ecosystem in Australia's Northern Territory, a key factor in the record 2011 global land carbon sink following prolonged La Niña rainfall and long - term vegetation changes Image: Eva van Gorsel (CSIRO)

«The CO2 fertilization of photosynthesis, which seems to be largely responsible for the global land carbon sink, could be heavily suppressed by O3 increases,» Sitch notes, especially if tropical plants are as sensitive as temperate ones to smog.

A large part of the land carbon sink is in the tropics, and a recent paper in Naturefound that the Amazon carbon sink has accumulated carbon at a slower rate in recent years.

«There is a danger in believing that land carbon sinks can solve the problem of atmospheric carbon emissions because this legitimises the ongoing use of fossil fuels,» Professor Mackey said.

This land carbon sink is believed to be in part due to increases in photosynthesis.

«This means that we should expect the land carbon sink to decline significantly when we begin to stabilize CO2.»

Co-author Professor Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, summarises the consequences of the study: «despite nutrient limitations in some regions, our study indicates that CO2 - fertilization of photosynthesis is currently playing a major role in the global land carbon sink.

Discussions on whether temperature or water availability is driving the strength of these variations in the land carbon sink have been highly contested with these year - to - year changes of the carbon balance seemingly related to global or tropical temperatures.

«The simple relationship between the temperature and the global land carbon sink should be treated with caution, and not be used to infer ecological processes and long - term predictions» adds Dr. Reichstein, head of the Department.

``... estimate that variations in diffuse fraction, associated largely with the «global dimming» period6, 7, 8, enhanced the land carbon sink by approximately one - quarter between 1960 and 1999.

Running rued the fact that land data that would help in determining estimates of the land carbon sink has been very difficult to measure.

«If droughts become more frequent, as expected, the time between droughts may become shorter than drought recovery time, leading to permanently damaged ecosystems and widespread degradation of the land carbon sink.»

New research shows that future plant growth may be restricted by nutrient availability, turning the land carbon sink into a source.

Forest regrowth may account for a large part of the land carbon sink in some regions (e.g., Pacala et al., 2001; Schimel et al., 2001; Hurtt et al., 2002; Sitch et al., 2005), while combustion of vegetation and soil organic matter may be responsible for a significant fraction of the interannual variability in CO2 (Cochrane, 2003; Nepstad et al., 2004; Kasischke et al., 2005; Randerson et al., 2005).