Measuring Carbon Dioxide Over the Ocean
The Norwegian weather ship Polarfront is equipped with a battery of instruments to measure wind speed, humidity and carbon dioxide. (Margaret Yelland /NOCS)
Reliable measurements of the air-sea flux of carbon dioxide – an important greenhouse gas – are needed for a better understanding of the impact of ocean-atmosphere interactions on climate. A new method developed by researchers at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) working in collaboration with colleagues at the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research (Bergen, Norway) promises to make this task considerably easier.
Infrared gas sensors measure carbon dioxide based on its characteristic absorption spectra and are used to evaluate the air-sea flux of the gas. So-called closed-path sensors precondition air before measurements are made, while open-path sensors can be used to measure the air in situ.
One advantage of using open-path sensors at sea is that wind measurements can be taken contemporaneously in the same place. Moreover, because they are small and don’t use much power they can be used on buoys.
“Open-path sensors have the potential greatly to increase our understanding of the variability of air-sea carbon dioxide fluxes,” said PhD student John Prytherch of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science at NOCS.
However, a long-standing concern has been that the values from open-path sensors do not tally with those from closed-path sensors, or with measurements made using other techniques. (more…)
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Echinoderms Contribute to Global Carbon Sink
Echinoderms such as brittle stars bury significant amounts of carbon at the seabed when they die and decay. (SERPENT)
The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated.
“Climate models must take this carbon sink into account,” says Mario Lebrato, lead author of the study. The work was done when he was at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and affiliated with the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES); he is now at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science in Germany.
Globally, the seabed habitats occupy more than 300 million million square metres, from the intertidal flats and pools to the mightiest deep-sea trenches at 11,000 meters. The benthos – the animals living on and in the sediments – populate this vast ecosystem.
Calcifying organisms incorporate carbon directly from the seawater into their skeletons in the form of inorganic minerals such as calcium carbonate. This means that their bodies contain a substantial amount of inorganic carbon. When they die and sink, some of the inorganic carbon is remineralised, and much of it becomes buried in sediments, where it remains locked up indefinitely. (more…)
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What Green Lessons Can We Learn from COP15?
The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, known as “COP15,” faced a simple problem – how do you hold a global conference on the environment without increasing greenhouse gas emissions, wasting paper and otherwise being un-green?
Not surprisingly, the Climate Change Conference answered all these questions correctly and more, producing a successfully green conference of an enormous magnitude. What can we take away from the UN’s success? The knowledge that if a large scale operation can be green, there is no reason that businesses can’t act similarly on a smaller scale.
First, start with a green city for the summit. The Economist Intelligence Unit just completed a survey of 30 European cities and found Copenhagen was the greenest based on: CO2 emissions; energy; buildings; transportation; water; air quality; waste and land use; and environmental governance.
Second, plan it to be green. The Danish Foreign Ministry said, “COP15 is organized following BS8901, a sustainable management standard. BS8901 was developed for the sustainable organization of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.” What was done and what effects it had will be published in March 2010 as the Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol. This will be a case study that future meetings can use as a guide. (more…)
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Global Temperatures Could Rise More Than Expected, New Study Shows
Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale.
The kinds of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide taking place today could have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures than previously thought, according to a new study led by Yale University geologists. Their findings appear December 20 in the advanced online edition of Nature Geoscience.
The team demonstrated that only a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was associated with a period of substantial warming in the mid- and early-Pliocene era, between three to five million years ago, when temperatures were approximately 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.
Climate sensitivity—the mean global temperature response to a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO2—is estimated to be 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius, using current models.
“These models take into account only relatively fast feedbacks, such as changes in atmospheric water vapor and the distribution of sea ice, clouds and aerosols,” said Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale and lead author of the paper. “We wanted to look at Earth-system climate sensitivity, which includes the effects of long-term feedbacks such as change in continental ice-sheets, terrestrial ecosystems and greenhouse gases other than CO2.” (more…)
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Climate Projections Underestimate CO2 Impact
The climate may be 30–50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long term than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience this week.
Projections over the next hundreds of years of climate conditions, including global temperatures, may need to be adjusted to reflect this higher sensitivity.
“Climate change is affecting water supplies for cities and farms; leading to more severe droughts, hurricanes, and floods; contributing to more intense forest fires; and putting coastal communities at risk,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who is on his way to the global climate change conference convening this week in Copenhagen. “This study and the ongoing work of our USGS scientists will help us continue to build more precise long-term projections and to prepare for the impacts of climate change on our world.”
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol and including the U.S. Geological Survey, studied global temperatures 3.3 to 3 million years ago, finding that the averages were significantly higher than expected from the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the time.
These underestimates occurred because the long-term sensitivity of the Earth system was not accurately taken into account. In these earlier periods, Earth had more time to adjust to some of the slower impacts of climate change. For example, as the climate warms and ice sheets melt, Earth will absorb more sunlight and continue to warm in the future since less ice is present to reflect the sun. (more…)
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Engineering Bacteria to Turn Carbon Dioxide into Liquid Fuel
James C. Liao, Chancellor's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA and associate director of the UCLA–Department of Energy Institute for Genomics and Proteomics.
Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.
In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.
The research appears in the Dec. 9 print edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology and is available online.
This new method has two advantages for the long-term, global-scale goal of achieving a cleaner and greener energy economy, the researchers say. First, it recycles carbon dioxide, reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Second, it uses solar energy to convert the carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can be used in the existing energy infrastructure, including in most automobiles.
While other alternatives to gasoline include deriving biofuels from plants or from algae, both of these processes require several intermediate steps before refinement into usable fuels. (more…)
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Atmospheric CO2 Mixing Ratios Over China
Trucks and pedestrians share a road in Linfen, China. Linfen has been named by some organizations as the dirtiest city in the world.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas regulated by the Kyoto Protocol. Human activities, such as fossil fuel burning and land use change, are major emitters of CO2, which is widely recognized as drivers of global warming and climate change. In the past decades, the field campaign and research program were only conducted at a few sites in China by different agencies. However, none of those measurements could effectively document spatial and temporal distributions of atmospheric CO2 and provide essential information for our understanding of regional differences and distributions over China. Thus, it is essential to establish a long-term observational network at multiple sites and carefully calibrate on internationally agreed reference scales with better quality controls.
Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences in Beijing initiated network observation at the four Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) stations in China: Waliguan (36.29ºN, 100.90ºE, 3816m asl) in remote western China, Shangdianzi (40.39ºN, 117.07ºE, 293.9m asl) in northeast Beijing, Lin’an (30.3ºN, 119.73ºE, 138m asl) in Yangtze Delta, and Longfengshan (44.73ºN, 127.6ºE, 310m asl) in northeastern China. It shows for the first time the atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios and regional differences based on internationally recognized weekly air sampling data from September 2006 to August 2007. The study is reported in Issue 52 (November, 2009) of Science in China Series D: Earth (more…)
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Oceans Absorbing Carbon Dioxide More Slowly, Yale Scientist Finds
The world’s oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide (CO2), a Yale geophysicist has found after pooling data taken over the past 50 years. With the oceans currently absorbing over 40 percent of the CO2 emitted by human activity, this could quicken the pace of climate change, according to the study, which appears in the November 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
Jeffrey Park, professor of geology and geophysics and director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, used data collected from atmospheric observing stations in Hawaii, Alaska and Antarctica to study the relationship between fluctuations in global temperatures and the global abundance of atmospheric CO2 on interannual (one to 10 years) time scales. A similar study from 20 years ago found a five-month lag between interannual temperature changes and the resulting changes in CO2 levels. Park has now found that this lag has increased from five to at least 15 months.
“No one had updated the analysis from 20 years ago,” Park said. “I expected to find some change in the lag time, but the shift was surprisingly large. This is a big change.” (more…)
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CO2 Emissions Continue Significant Climb
WHOI chemist Scott Doney led a team that developed ocean-model simulations for estimating the historical variations in air-sea CO2 fluxes. (Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The annual rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has more than tripled in this decade, compared to the 1990s, reports an international consortium of scientists, who paint a bleak picture of the Earth’s future unless “CO2 emissions [are] drastically reduced.”
These CO2 emissions increased at a rate of 3.4% per year from 2000 to 2008, in contrast to 1% each year in the previous decade, scientists from the Global Carbon Project report in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. The team comprises some 30 researchers from around the world, including Scott C. Doney, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Richard A. Houghton, senior scientist and acting director of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC).
Since 2000, the scientists documented an overall increase of 29% in global CO2 emissions. They attributed the rise to increasing production and trade of manufactured products, particularly from emerging economies, the gradual shift from oil to coal and the planet’s waning capacity to absorb CO2.
Doney led a team that developed ocean-model simulations for estimating the historical variations in air-sea CO2 fluxes.
“Over the last decade, CO2 emissions have continued to climb despite efforts to control emissions,” Doney said. “Preliminary evidence suggests that the land and ocean may be becoming less effective at removing CO2 from the atmosphere, which could accelerate future climate change.” (more…)
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Intensive Land-Management Leaves Europe Without Carbon Sinks
In order to compute whether European landscapes store or release greenhouse gases, climatologists have for the first time also considered methane and nitrogen oxide emissions from livestock farming and intensive agriculture. The bottom line is that forests, grasslands and agriculture fields, particularly in central Europe, freely release greenhouse gas (in carbon dioxide equivalents / red colouring in diagram). In this way they balance out the effect which Russian forests have as a source of carbon dioxide storage (blue colouring), almost completely.
Of all global carbon dioxide emissions, less than half accumulate in the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. The remainder is hidden away in oceans and terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and peat-lands. Stimulating this “free service” of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems is considered one of the main, immediately available ways of reducing climate change. However, new greenhouse gas bookkeeping has revealed that for the European continent this service isn’t free after all. These findings are presented in the most recent edition of Nature Geoscience (Advanced Online Publication, November 22, 2009).
Researchers from 17 European countries cooperating in the EU-Integrated Project CarboEurope, led by Detlef Schulze, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany have compiled the first comprehensive greenhouse gas balance of Europe. They made two independent estimates: one based on what the atmosphere sees and one based on what terrestrial ecosystems see. (more…)
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Iron Controls Patterns of Nitrogen Fixation in the Atlantic, Affecting CO2 Sequester Ability
This is the experimental set-up on the Royal Research Ship Discovery. (Dr Mark Moore (NOCS))
Scientists including researchers from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the University of Essex have discovered that interactions between iron supply, transported through the atmosphere from deserts, and large-scale oceanic circulation control the availability of a crucial nutrient, nitrogen, in the Atlantic. Their findings have potentially important implications for understanding global climate, both past and future.
Nitrogen is an essential element for life, but in its gaseous form (N2) cannot be used by most organisms. To be useful, nitrogen has to be ‘fixed’ by combining it with other chemicals to form compounds such as ammonium. ‘Diazotrophic’ microbes such as the blue-green bacterium Trichodesmium are equipped with the enzymes needed to perform these energy-demanding transformations. (more…)
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Eliminating CO2 Emissions at Coal-Burning Power Plants
by David L. Chandler
Researchers at MIT have shown the benefits of a new approach toward eliminating carbon-dioxide emissions at coal-burning power plants.
Researchers at MIT have shown the benefits of a new approach toward eliminating carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions at coal-burning power plants.
Their system, called pressurized oxy-fuel combustion, provides a way of separating all of the carbon-dioxide emissions produced by the burning of coal, in the form of a concentrated, pressurized liquid stream. This allows for carbon dioxide sequestration: the liquid CO2 stream can be injected into geological formations deep enough to prevent their escape into the atmosphere.
Finding a practical way to sequester carbon emissions is considered critical to the mitigation of climate change while continuing to use fossil fuels, which currently account for more than 80 percent of energy production in the United States and more than 90 percent worldwide. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are projected to rise by more than 50 percent worldwide by 2030.
It might seem paradoxical to reduce the carbon footprint of a coal plant by making its emissions into a more concentrated stream of carbon dioxide. But Ahmed Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane (1972) Professor of Mechanical Engineering and leader of the MIT team analyzing this new technology, explains: “this is the first step. Before you sequester, you have to concentrate and pressurize” the greenhouse gases. “You have to redesign the power plant so that it produces a pure stream of pressurized liquid carbon dioxide, to make it sequestration ready.” (more…)
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Fall Color Coming Later? Blame CO2
Do those fall colors seem to show up later and later? Scientists say we can blame increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for prolonging the growing season of trees.
“Carbon dioxide fools the trees,” says Wendy Jones, a research associate at Michigan Technological University who conducts research at the Aspen FACE site in northern Wisconsin. “They think they should still be growing when they ought to be going through autumnal senescence”—changing their colors and settling down for a long winter’s nap. (more…)
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New Process Removes CO2 From Power Plant Emissions
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientist David Heldebrant demonstrates how a new process called reversible acid gas capture works to pull more than just carbon dioxide out of power plant emissions. (DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a reusable organic liquid that can pull harmful gases such as carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide out of industrial emissions from power plants. The process could directly replace current methods and allow power plants to capture double the amount of harmful gases in a way that uses no water, less energy and saves money.
“Power plants could easily retrofit to use our process as a direct replacement for existing technology,” said David Heldebrant, PNNL’s lead research scientist for the project. (more…)
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CO2 Making Oceans More Acidic Effecting Sea Life
Dalhousie University student Kim Davies.
A student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia is bringing understanding to the troubling problem of ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
As an undergraduate, Kim Davies worked with Dr. Verena Tunnicliffe, biology professor at the University Victoria, examining how mussels have adapted to extremely acidic waters near underwater volcanoes. The paper she co-authored will be published in the May issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. (more…)
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Carbon Sinks Losing the Battle with Rising Emissions
Findings on the exchange of heat and CO2 between the atmosphere and deep ocean are being discussed in Copenhagen.(CSIRO)
The stabilising influence that land and ocean carbon sinks have on rising carbon emissions is gradually weakening, say scientists attending this week’s international Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
“Forests, grasslands and oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere faster than ever but they are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions,” says CSIRO scientist and co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Dr Mike Raupach.
“While these natural CO2 sinks are a huge buffer against climate change, which would occur about twice as fast without them, they cannot be taken for granted.” (more…)
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Ethanol’s Carbon Footprint Cause for Concern
To avoid creating greenhouse gases, it makes more sense using today’s technology to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel, according to a comprehensive Duke University-led study.
“Converting set-asides to corn-ethanol production is an inefficient and expensive greenhouse gas mitigation policy that should not be encouraged until ethanol-production technologies improve,” the study’s authors reported in the March edition of the research journal Ecological Applications.
Nevertheless, farmers and producers are already receiving federal subsidies to grow more corn for ethanol under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. (more…)
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Recycling a Greenhouse Gas for High-Energy Fuel
A batch reactor for converting CO2 to methane via sunlight is shown outdoors on a winter day. (Grimes Group)
Fossil fuel use, ranging from electricity generating power plants to automobiles, pumps billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually, changing the climate in ways that are likely to be detrimental to future generations. The rising use of fossil fuels, driven by population growth and rising standards of living across the globe, adds to the urgency of finding a solution to the problem of rapidly increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas. At Penn State, a team of researchers led by Craig Grimes has come up with an ingenious method of turning captured CO2 into methane, a combustible fuel, using the energy of the sun. (more…)
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Burying Crop Residues at Sea Could Reduce Carbon Dioxide Levels
Imagine a massive international effort to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide - build up in the atmosphere. It involves gathering billions of tons of cornstalks, wheat straw, and other crop residue from farm fields, bailing it, shipping the material to seaports, and then burying it in the deep ocean. Scientists in Washington and California have concluded that this Crop Residue Oceanic Permanent Sequestration (CROPS) approach is the only practical method now available for permanently sequestering, or isolating, the enormous quantities of CO2 necessary to have a real impact on global warming.
In a report scheduled for the Feb. 15 issue of ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal, Stuart Strand and Gregory Benford conclude that (CROPS) could reduce global carbon dioxide accumulation by up to 15 percent per year. (more…)
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Mapping Greenhouse Gases May Help Combat Global Warming
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) will collect precise global measurements of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. The data will help scientists understand the natural processes and human activities that influence distribution of this greenhouse gas, one of several that can trap heat near the surface of the Earth and influence climate.
The first global maps of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels based on data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory will be created by a University of Michigan researcher and her colleagues.
The team will use sophisticated mathematical techniques to fill information gaps between the satellite’s direct measurements, the closest of which will be 93 miles apart at the equator. (more…)
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