October 15th, 2008
By John DeFore
Announced this week is news of another way in which warming climates may produce natural phenomena that accelerate warming by adding more carbon to the atmosphere. A letter published online by the journal Nature Geoscience offers an abstract of research into carbon release by peat moss.
The work, led by Takeshi Ise of Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, was a simulation using data from both shallow and deep peat areas in Manitoba, Canada.
“Historically, northern peatlands have functioned as a carbon sink, sequestering large amounts of soil organic carbon,” the letter explains, noting that low temperatures in soggy soil lead to slow decomposition (thus retaining carbon) and also cause water-table levels to rise, growing more peat and storing more carbon.
In the team’s simulation, though, they envisioned the effect of a temperature rise of four degrees Celsius. What they project in such a scenario is “a 40% loss of soil organic carbon from the shallow peat and 86% from the deep peat.”
As temperature rises, not only does the top layer of peat dry and rot, but that drying lets the water table drop, contributing to further drying — all of which releases carbon into the atmosphere, adding to warming that continues the cycle.
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
