Newswise — A group of scientists from Chapman University has successfully investigated the Earth's response to climate change-induced heating. In their groundbreaking study, they propose a fresh approach to measuring the amount of carbon dioxide released by ecosystems in response to temperature changes. This is crucial as it helps us understand how effectively plants and soil can mitigate damage by absorbing carbon pollution from the atmosphere. Notably, this research is the first of its kind to explore the relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide release at a landscape level.
The significant findings of this study have been published in the esteemed peer-reviewed journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution. According to Joshua Fisher, a climate scientist and associate professor of environmental science and policy at Chapman University's Schmid College of Science and Technology, the current vegetation that absorbs approximately a quarter to a third of humanity's carbon emissions may struggle to maintain its efficiency in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Fisher emphasizes that one of the major uncertainties concerning the Earth's future lies in how ecosystems will respond to rising temperatures. Their recent research offers valuable understanding of the planet's fate and provides a means to measure these changes on a large scale.
Until now, satellite-based methods have been used to monitor global photosynthetic activity and measure gas concentrations in plants and soil. However, these tools have not been effective in tracking respiration, the process of "breathing out" carbon dioxide, across different biomes and continents. Instead, respiration has been indirectly estimated by calculating the difference between photosynthesis and the overall change in carbon dioxide, leading to less accurate representations of the larger landscape.
To address this, Fisher and a team of scientists utilized a network of monitoring stations placed on towers among the trees. These stations, spread across North America, allowed them to gather new and more precise carbon dioxide measurements. This advancement has provided invaluable insights into how future measurements can be conducted over larger areas of land.
When the scientists compared the carbon dioxide measurements taken from the monitoring stations on the towers with the spot measurements done on the ground, they discovered a discrepancy. The ground measurements exhibited an overly sensitive relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature, which was not observed when considering the larger landscape. Joshua Fisher explains that the ground measurements suggested significant CO2 emissions for minor temperature changes, whereas the landscape measurements showed minimal CO2 emission for similar temperature variations.
Based on these insights, the research team updated their mathematical models, which are used to predict these relationships. Remarkably, the models performed much better after incorporating the new findings.
Fisher commends the study for its ingenuity, as it effectively combined various measurements, models, and understanding to create a comprehensive analysis. He believes that these results propel us further towards a deeper comprehension of the Earth and the potential implications if we continue to alter its climate.
The study was funded by the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Interdisciplinary Science and Carbon Monitoring System, the Carnegie Institution for Science’s endowment, Singapore’s Ministry of Education, the RUBISCO SFA, which is sponsored by the Regional and Global Model Analysis Program in the Climate and Environmental Sciences Division of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and NASA.
Other members of the research team include lead author Wu Sun and Anna Michalak of Carnegie Institution for Science; Xiangzhong Luo, Yao Zhang, and Trevor Keenan of University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Yuanyuan Fang of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District; and Yoichi P. Shiga of the Universities Space Research Association.
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