In a warming world, New England's trees are storing more carbon:
Climate change has increased the productivity of forests, according to a new study that synthesizes hundreds of thousands of carbon observations collected over the last quarter century at the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site, one of the most intensively studied forests in the world.
The study, published today in Ecological Monographs, reveals that the rate at which carbon is captured from the atmosphere at Harvard Forest nearly doubled between 1992 and 2015. The scientists attribute much of the increase in storage capacity to the growth of 100-year-old oak trees, still vigorously rebounding from colonial-era land clearing, intensive timber harvest, and the 1938 Hurricane—and bolstered more recently by increasing temperatures and a longer growing season due to climate change. Trees have also been growing faster due to regional increases in precipitation and atmospheric carbon dioxide, while decreases in atmospheric pollutants such as ozone, sulfur, and nitrogen have reduced forest stress.
[...] The trees show no signs of slowing their growth, even as they come into their second century of life. But the scientists note that what we see today may not be the forest's future. "It's entirely possible that other forest development processes like tree age may dampen or reverse the pattern we've observed," says Finzi.
Journal Reference:
Adrien C. Finzi, Marc‐André Giasson, Audrey A. Barker Plotkin, et al. Carbon budget of the Harvard Forest Long‐Term Ecological Research site: pattern, process, and response to global change [$], Ecological Monographs (DOI: 10.1002/ecm.1423)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @08:21PM (1 child)
You see the most counterintuative thing will be when we realize that in "Warming World" global temperatures will flactuate, and in fact sometimes lower. Because in a "Warming World", most of the hot air is contained by "Scientific Studies."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @08:26PM
When the earth warms more precipitation ends up as clouds and in particular over the poles. This falls to earth and freezes, thus growing the ice caps. Bigger ice caps reflect more sunlight along with the clouds which leads to further cooling and bigger ice caps.
So we expect the earth to cool during global warming.