Australian Rain Forests Have Stopped Sucking Up Carbon

Rain forests absorb carbon from the air, and they are 
considered a key ally in the fight against climate
change. But a study in an Australian rain
forest suggests after climate change might
turn these forests into carbon emitters. 

Tropical rain forests in Australia have stopped following the rules. 

Rain forests are supposed to be "carbon sinks." That means live trees in the forest absorb carbon from the air more than dead trees in that forest emit into the atmosphere. If you don't like climate change, rain forests are your friend. 

Or at least used to be, in Australia, anyway. Tropical rainforests there have begun to release more carbon into the air than they take in. 

The problem is that extreme temperatures, drought and arid air masses are killing trees. Queensland, Australia has also experienced an increasing number of cyclones, and the ones they're getting are becoming more severe.

These storms are killing more trees and making it harder for new ones to grow and take the fallen trees' place.

There's been more tree deaths than growth, so when trees die and begin to rot, they release stored carbon back into the air. 

The change in Australian rain forests isn't new, but it's newly discovered. And it is a change from what it always has been. 

The Smithsonian explains about how researchers looked at the rain forests plants:

"The tracked plants absorbed about 552 pounds of carbon per acre on average, each year from 1971 to 2000. Then, from 2010 to 2019, they emitted about 830 pounds of carbon per acre, on average, each year."

All this could have implications elsewhere.   

The Australian rain forests are the first to transition from so-called carbon sinks, which store carbon grabbed from the air, into areas that release carbon into the atmosphere. The researchers said they feared other rain forests around the world would suffer the same fate. 

"And that's really significant. It could be a sort of canary in the coal mine," said Dr. Hannah Carne of the Western Sydney University, according to the BBC.

"Current models may overestimate the capacity of the tropical forests to help offset fossil fuel emissions," Carle added. 

Especially since other rain forests might well follow the example of Australia. 

Per Smithsonian:

"No other rainforests have yet shown evidence of emitting more carbon than they absorb. The Amazon rainforest has shown an overall decline in carbon capacity, and part of it has become a carbon source due to human caused deforestation and forest - but its trees have responded to increased CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing their own growth."

But that ability to increase absorption might have a limit. And the research in Australia illustrates those limits might be close in places like the Amazon.  

Can Dusting Cropland With Crushed Up Volcanic Rock Ease Climate Change?

A truck spreads crushed basalt rock over a Brazilian
farm field. The idea is supposed to combat climate
change by running weathered rock into the oceans
where it is stored out of the atmosphere so 
that it can't affect global temperatures. 

 Across big stretches agricultural land in southern Brazil, a company called Tereradot is spreading dust made of crushed volcanic rock all over the place. 

It's not some odd form of fertilizer. It's even weirder: It's an effort to combat climate change. 

As the Washington Post explains: 

"As rain percolates throughout the soil, chemical reactions pull carbon from the air and convert it into bicarbonate ions that eventually wash into the ocean, where the carbon remains stored."

Spreading the dust greatly accelerates a process that usually takes thousands or even millions of years to complete. 

WaPo goes on:

"The technique, known as ''enhanced rock weathering' is emerging as a promising approach to lock away carbon on a massive scale. Some researchers estimate the method has the potential to sequester billions of tons of carbon, helping slow global climate trends. 

Other major projects are underway across the globe and have collectively raised over a quarter billion dollars."

Rock weathering is a natural, but slow process in which rock breaks down, gets washed into rivers and eventually the ocean, which stores the carbon in the water, out of the atmosphere. When temperatures are high, the weathering speeds up. But not nearly enough to combat climate change. 

Enter a company called Terradot to greatly accelerating that slow process. They take basalt, which weathers easily, and crush up until it's the texture of baby powder. That increases its surface area. The rock is then spread out on the ground in hot, humid places so the pace of the weathering is maximized. 

Most of Terradot's work is happening in Brazil. Much of the cropland has naturally acidic soils, but the crushed up basalt balances that acidity, helping with crop yields.

Brazil has a lot of basalt quarries, as the rock is used in construction. Grinding and crushing the rock for construction leaves a lot of pieces of waste basalt. Terradot buys that waste, turns it into dust and spreads it on fields for their climate change control efforts. 

The powdered basalt is free for farmers. Terradot bears the cost of shipping and spreading the rock dust.  

As cool as it sounds, this idea is no slam dunk against climate change.  How accurately can anyone measure how much this process removes from the atmosphere. Is it cost effective? And scaling up the enhanced rock weathering all over the world is a logistical nightmare. 

Scientists want to see more data to determine whether the basalt dust gets rid of as much atmospheric carbon as startups like Terradot claim.  

Mauna Loa Eruption Shuts Down Key Climate Monitoring Site

The Mauna Loa Observatory, the world's premier site for
measuring carbon in the atmosphere, has been shut
down by the volcano's eruption. 

 You might have heard that the big Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is erupting for the first time in 38 years.  

One big problem this eruption has caused is it has temporarily shut down the worlds premier atmospheric carbon monitoring site. 

As Yahoo News reports:

"The Hawaiian station goes back to 1958 and is the main site for the famous Keeling Curve that shows rising carbon dioxide levels from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that tracks with rising temperatures. Levels of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa have increased 33 percent since 1958."

The monitoring station is at an elevation of 11,300 feet and has a 131-foot tower that collects air to measure levels of carbon dioxide, radiation and other substances, reports Yahoo News. 

The lava flows are not threatening the actual monitoring station, but the eruption cut power lines further down the mountain. Also, lava crossed the road leading to the observatory. 

The world has something like 300 carbon monitoring stations, so measurements will continue. But Mauna Loa is regarded as the most accurate and cleanest. That's because there's no big population centers nearby. There's not much vegetation around, either. 

And the elevation is so high that it really helps grab a good sample of the atmosphere. It's too high up to contaminate measurements with day to day pollution from cars, houses, factories and such. 

 I'm seeing conflicting reports about whether this is the first time the volcano has screwed up carbon measuring on Mauna Loa. Another Mauna Loa eruption in 1984 halted measurements for 36 days, but that time away was short enough so that it didn't really mess up records, says Yahoo News. But Hawaii News Now says this is the first time in 60 years or more that measurements were interrupted.

The Keeling Curve is named after Charles David Keeling, who in 1958 started taking carbon dioxide measurements atop Mauna Loa.  The Keeling Curve demonstrates the carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere are currently higher than they've been in 3 million years. 

His son, Ralph Keeling, told Axios that scientists are scrambling to find a similar location to Mauna Loa to take CO2 readings, at least on a temporary basis. 

"In the long run, but I don't know how long, the station will be up again. So the record will continue as before, and we'll have some kind of gap where the data is slightly different or missing," Keeling said. 

Incidentally, some very large volcanic eruptions can temporarily change the climate. Tambora, in 1815, caused a world-wide chill down, leading to New England's "Year Without A Summer" in 1816.

To a lesser extent, Pinatubo in 1991  cooled the world by 1 degree Fahrenheit for a year or two after its eruption.  That almost, briefly wiped out all the heating from climate change at that point in history. 

Most volcanoes, when they do affect the Earth's climate, cool it. But last January's massive Tonga eruption might have the opposite effect. It injected lots of water into the dry stratosphere, which might temporarily accelerate global warming for the next couple of years or so. 

Mauna Loa's eruption is producing lots of lava, but smoke and ash are not rising particularly high in the atmosphere, so this event won't affect the world's climate in any measurable way. 

 

The Covid Pandemic Is Not Over, But The (Brief) Reduction In Carbon Emissions Sure Is

Carbon emissions are almost back up to where they were
before the pandemic. There was a sharp drop in emissions 
during pandemic lockdowns in 2020, but they weren't 
as extensive as some scientists had anticipated.

 The global Covid-19 pandemic rages on, and we all know it has produced absolutely no good news.

If you were looking for any silver lining with the pandemic, it was that lockdowns meant less carbon emissions, meaning contributions to climate change also declined.  

Carbon emissions dipped by 5.4 percent in 2020.  Not much, but it was a start. And, to state the obvious, the dip in carbon emissions surely wasn't worth the 5.3 million and counting global deaths from Covid 

The dip in emissions was short-lived.  Certainly much shorter than the actual pandemic  This year, we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels. 

According to the journal Nature: 

"After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4% or 2.3 billion tons in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic squelched economic and social activities worldwide, according to new data on daily fossil fuel emissions. The decline is significant - roughly double Japan's yearly emissions - but smaller than many climate researchers expected given the scale of the pandemic, and is not expected to last once the virus is brought under control."

Estimates from Stanford-led researchers indicate this year's carbon emissions will have risen by 4.9 percent, wiping out most of the emission cuts from 2020.

Nature notes that the United Nations estimates the world needs to cut carbon emissions by 7.6 percent per year over the next 10 years to prevent the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Since we couldn't cut emissions by that much in a year when the world pretty much shut down for part of it means we really have our work cut out for us. 

It's plain that government policy, however well intentioned in some nations, is not enough to stem the tide of rising emissions.

Even if the rate of emissions slows in the coming years, that might not be enough. Think of it this way. If you leave the water running out of the faucet in the bathtub with the drain closed it will overflow.  If you turn the water down but not off, the bathtub will still eventually overflow.

That's kind of the predicament we're in now.