October 15th, 2008 · No Comments

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