Global Warming

Earth's Soil Is Hyperventilating

According to a new study published Aug. 1 in the journal Nature, there's about twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) stored in Earth's soil as there is floating around the atmosphere, and for the last few decades, that underground greenhouse gas has been leaking out at a significantly increased rate.

Based on more than 2,000 sources of climate data taken from ecosystems around the world, a team of soil scientists found that the rate of CO2 released from Earth's soil has increased globally by about 1.2 percent in just 25 years — and you can blame that on hot, hungry microbes.

Dirt doesn't actually breathe, of course, but it sort of looks that way when tiny, underground organisms help release the CO2 stored in plant roots, dead leaves and other natural detritus. Hungry microbes gorge on the tasty carbon stored in this plant matter, and then release carbon dioxide as a natural byproduct of this feeding, just as you do when you exhale after a deep breath.

This process is known as "soil respiration," and it's an important complement to photosynthesis — the process by which plants turn CO2, water and light into energy — helping to keep ecosystems around the world running smoothly.

But lately, researchers have found that as global temperatures rise, microbes in the soil have been releasing CO2 faster than plants can snatch it up again. Previous studies have indicated that tree roots and certain microbes both respire more frequently at higher temperatures (up until a certain point, when the intense heat causes the organisms to stop functioning completely). But the exact effects of that increase in respiration had never been studied on a global scale until now.

The data showed that the rate of global soil respiration had increased by about 1.2 percent in the 25-year window between 1990 and 2014. Most of that growth was due to increased microbial action; the tiny creatures in Earth's soil are freeing more and more greenhouse gases from our planet's surface.

While a 1.2 percent increase might not seem significant on its face, the researchers made it clear that even a modest change like this represents a "massive" ecosystem shift over a relatively short time. And while the full effects of this microbial huffing and puffing are hard to estimate, it's possible that all that extra CO2 will feed a self-intensifying loop of atmospheric warming and soil respiration over the years to come.

Global warming threatens Arctic fauna

Infections, untypical for the Arctic, have been coming into the Arctic zone due to climate change, Director of the Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Ecology and Evolution Studies Vyacheslav Rozhnov said in St. Petersburg. "The new information is alarming," he said. "Animals in the Arctic are facing infections, which have not been typical there." The new infections adapt quickly to the changing temperatures and threaten the animals, he continued.