Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature's carbon sink failing? (The Guardian)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe

-snip-

In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.

There are warning signs at sea, too. Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected, which is disrupting the Gulf Stream ocean current and slows the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. For the algae-eating zooplankton, melting sea ice is exposing them to more sunlight – a shift scientists say could keep them in the depths for longer, disrupting the vertical migration that stores carbon on the ocean floor.

“We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.

“Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said.

-snip-

[Hugin]

1. Timely post...

Locally, anyway, I believe the reason vegetation isn’t absorbing as much CO2 is that the heat is beginning to kill the plants.

[Botany]

2. Trees and plants didn't absorb any carbon in 2023?

Please pure codswallop. Now we are continuing to add more CO2 to the atmosphere every
year and the ppm of CO2 is still rising but plants still continue to have photosynthesis and
store the carbohydrates in their leaves, stems, trunks, and roots.

[ck4829]

3. Unfortunately, we can't say "Here comes the airplane" and spoonfeed our CO2 to plants

Last edited Mon Oct 14, 2024, 11:12 AM - Edit history (1)

Plants lack several of the systems that animals have and lacking locomotion, their needs are so much lower than animals.

It's always funny seeing denialists say "But CO2 is good because CO2 is plant food", plants are not going to utilize CO2 if they don't need it though.

We are reaching the upper limit in what plants will take in if we haven't already soared past it.

We can't rely on nature to act as a CO2 scrubber for our industries.

[Hugin]

5. Yes, the amount of...

CO2 the Earth’s CO2 consuming systems can absorb in a closed system is always near 100%. It’s a “zero sum game”. Finite.

The variables are more plants, bigger plants (both of which includes algal blooms, potentially very bad), and/or less CO2. Also, those events not directly related to CO2 consumption, but disrupt CO2 consumption systems. Such as something as routine as a change of seasons when changing light levels cause deciduous plants to stop consuming CO2 and begin releasing it.

[bigtree]

4. thank you.

[highplainsdem]

6. Did you read the full article? They're factoring in wildfires, drought, logging, etc., rather than considering

just an individual healthy plant storing carbon.

And btw, the headline is trees and land. Soil can become a net emitter of CO2, rather than storing it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00619-z

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. It's the net land figure, taking into account CO2 from burning, deforestation and so on

The net land CO2 flux, including land use change emissions, decreased to reach a low value of 0.44 ± 0.21 GtC yr-1 in 2023, compared to an average of 2.04 GtC yr-1 in the period 2010-2022, based on the bottom-up models. This is a record low value compared to previous years since 2003, both in our models (Fig. 1b) and in the models used by the global budget.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.12447

For comparison, the oceans remained a sink of about 2.5 GtC yr-1, and we emitted about 10 GtC yr-1 from fossil fuels, cement production and other activities.