October 14, 2014
Matt McGrath for BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29601644
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29601644
Is there a lot less CO2 in our atmosphere? This is what the
article suggests that I read. Newest researches have shown that plants and
other living things have absorbed an amount of up to 16% more than previously
thought. This would mean that there is a lot less CO2 in the atmosphere than
thought before. There has been a large overestimate of the CO2 in our
Atmosphere. On the other hand, the article also states that this new research
won’t change the Global Warming predictions.
More good news are that about half of the worldwide produced
CO2 ends up absorbed by plants and other living things, really showing to us
that this Is quite good. So actually a lot of CO2 is absorbed and not all is
going into our atmosphere. To find out these new facts, the absorbing of CO2 in
trees and plants was looked at. They saw that the CO2 is really spreading
slowly inside the trees and plants, this process is called Mesophyll Diffusion,
where the CO2 is spreaded evenly all throughout the leaf, so that in the most
effective way, Oxygen can be produced.
Before the new research, the CO2 absorbing was at 915
Billion tonnes of CO2. Yet now through the research, the number increases by
16% to 1,057 Billion tonnes of CO2. That is over 1 Trillion tonnes of CO2! This
is really a lot of CO2 that has been absorbed by the plants, yet we have to
consider that another 1 Trillion tonnes of CO2 have entered our atmosphere,
which is really a number that can’t be imagined. Yet this number could even
change to be more, due to that the modelers, who model the absorbance of CO2
will still have to model the new researches, meaning that there is a time lag
between a new and reliable model of the CO2 absorbing. Even before this
research, it was thought that there was 17% more CO2 in the atmosphere, which
is pretty good for us, as less CO2 is much better for us than more. Another sad
side is although, that since 1950, the CO2 emissions have boosted up in comparison
to the years before.
Next, this new research also brought more research to the
structure of plants, as now other scientists also know how the plants are
really built up, as now it is known, that they can absorb a lot more CO2. On
the other hand, it is expected that the plants can’t absorb all of the new CO2
emitted, as there is always more and more CO2 emitted each year. Yet the plants
at least can hold off some of the global warming, so that the Global warming
can stay under 2°C.
I think that this research is very good news for our
environment. This is due to that we now know, that there is actually less CO2
in our atmosphere than we thought before, and those masses really could harm
our environment. Especially that there is a lot more CO2 absorbed as shown in
this quote: “Between
1901 and 2100 the researchers believe that their new work increases the amount
of carbon taken up through fertilisation from 915 billion tonnes to 1,057
billion, a 16% increase.” This really shows to us that there is a lot more CO2
absorbed by the plants. This will then mean that we could keep Earth a bit
longer as a habitable planet than we thought before, as we thought there was a
lot more CO2 in the atmosphere. This really shows to us, that there are many
scientists, who research about if there is also something that benefits our
environment, as shown here now, that the Earth hasn’t been harmed that much as
we have thought before.
Pictures:
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting article. The things we can't see are often one of the most difficult phenomena to explain and study. Global warming and what is happening in our atmosphere is one of those phenomena. The research is certainly very hopeful as to the amount that plants are really helping keep CO2 measures at bay.