• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Heat saps trees’ beneficial effect

December 10, 2015
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

COP21: As the planet continues to warm, forest restoration may not be as efficient a strategy as thought for countering increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

PARIS, 10 December, 2015 – The vegetable world – especially in the form of forests, one of the great counters to climate change − may not be able to keep pace with global warming.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

New research suggests that although increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can and do deliver extra fertilisation and more vigorous growth, the effect may have been over-estimated.

And a second study offers a new way of exploring the trade-off between temperature and photosynthesis, the process that converts atmospheric carbon into timber and food on the table.

Plants need carbon dioxide to grow. In the last century, global average levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from fewer than 300 parts per million to 400 parts, as humans burn fossil fuels and put more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The vegetable world is calculated to absorb at least one-third of these new emissions.

Satellite evidence

But William Kolby Smith, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that the foliage may not be able to keep up the good work. And that may be because, as the planet warms, plants face other challenges.

They examined satellite evidence of plant cover over the last 30 years and found that plant growth had indeed increased − but not as much as calculations had predicted. This was perhaps because of limitations of water and nutrient supply.

Their conclusions are not the first such, but they offer important confirmation of previous studies.

Climate scientists and government chiefs now meeting at COP21, the UN summit in Paris aimed at reaching agreement on action to confront climate change, have built forest restoration into the package of counter measures.

“Our estimates of global vegetation growth indicate that plant growth may not buy us as much time as expected”

The message from Minnesota is that forests may not be quite as efficient as everybody hoped, and the ministers may have to concentrate even more intently on the reduction of emissions.

“Current Earth system models assume that global plant growth will provide the tremendous benefit of offsetting a significant portion of humanity’s CO2 emissions, thus buying us much-needed time to curb emissions,” Dr Smith says.

“Unfortunately, our observation-based estimates of global vegetation growth indicate that plant growth may not buy us as much time as expected.”

Plant metabolism

A separate study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a mechanism that limits the CO2 fertilisation effect, and a new way of studying the process.

Jürgen Schleucher, professor of medical biochemistry and biophysics at Umeå University in Sweden, and colleagues report that they used herbarium samples of agricultural crops and wild plants to study what happens to plant metabolism as carbon dioxide levels and temperature rise.

The levels of photosynthesis go up. But the plant’s other response, photorespiration (the vegetable equivalent of breathing), goes up even faster, according to their analysis of radioactive isotope measurements in plants from 1890 and 2012.

The technique found much the same effect in wild peat moss and in sugar beet − so the explanation had nothing to do with the way humans have selected and improved crops over the century.

Because the shift is fundamental, and because global average temperatures have risen by 1°C in the last century, and – whatever agreement is reached in Paris – are predicted to rise by at least 3°C by the end of this century, such change must be occurring in most of the planet’s green foliage.

The scientists see their technique as a foundation for more detailed study. One of the report’s co-authors, John Marshall, professor of tree physiology at the University of Idaho, in the US, says: “We suspected that photorespiration was stealing away a portion of photosynthesis. Now we know it was leaving fingerprints.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
28

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
322
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
124
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
121
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
341
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
313
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
323
Next Post

US town faces watery end from rising sea

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}