I certainly don’t profess to be an expert on environmental issues but I do read what I can in order to gain a fuller understanding of what is happening to our planet. I haven’t written a diary here in a long time but after reading two articles today about two unrelated studies, I saw something that I find very disturbing and felt the need to share it with you.
This isn’t a political diary and perhaps this story doesn’t even belong here, but I think it is something that everyone should be thinking about.
The two news articles I am pulling information from are:
Study Sheds Light on Earth’s CO2 Cycles
Southern Ocean "soaking up less emissions"
The first article describes a study done to track CO2 from the deep ocean to upper ocean and atmosphere over the past 40,000 years and the results of this study help them analyze "bumps" that occurred 18,000 years ago and 13,000 years ago.
Some of the points I found most interesting in the article are:
- Abrupt changes in deep ocean circulation triggered enormous carbon release into the atmosphere during the last deglaciation.
- CO2 levels today are higher than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years.
- The timing of the major CO2 release corresponds with deep sea circulation changes caused by ice melting in the North Atlantic at that time.
- The carbon added to the upper ocean and atmosphere was "very old" suggesting it had been stored in the deep ocean and isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years.
- The uptake and release of CO2 by the ocean in the past was intimately linked to how and how fast the ocean circulated.
- Any decrease in the absorption of fossil fuel CO2 by the world’s oceans could pose some very serious problems.
- When the ocean circulation system changes, it alters how carbon-rich deep water rises to the surface to release its carbon into the atmosphere.
In my simple mind it appears that the ocean acts as a sponge to absorb some of the CO2 in the atmosphere, if it can’t soak it up then temperatures rise, when temperatures rise we get ice melting, the melting of the ice alters the ocean circulation patterns, the circulation system changes and deep ocean carbon comes to the surface resulting in a major release into the atmosphere above and beyond the CO2 already there because of human-related emissions. A major release of carbon by the ocean corresponds to a period of deglaciation. At least that's how I interpret it.
Now the last paragraph of this article reads to me like we have yet to reach the stage where the oceans circulation pattern has changed and reads as though this is something we can try to prevent from happening in the future. And that is all well and good, but it brings me to the second article...
The second article highlights some findings done on a study analyzing the "carbon-sink" nature of the Southern Ocean. They found that the southern ocean is absorbing an ever-decreasing proportion of CO2 from the atmosphere and the excess CO2 in the atmosphere will accelerate global warming.
However, the comment in the article that really caught my eye and gave me goosebumps (given the information I read in the first article) was this:
The reduced ability to absorb carbon is thought to be a result of high winds acting on ocean currents bringing deeper water that already containing high levels of carbon to the surface.
It also says that the reduction in the oceans ability to absorb CO2 is coming at least two decades earlier than expected. They also indicate that climate models project more intense Southern Ocean winds if CO2 levels continue to increase over the next century. This indicates to me that more winds means more deep ocean CO2 coming to the surface. Does this accelerate the big release as described in the first article in terms of the previous deglaciation periods? In my simple view, I would have to say yes. But, again, I am no scientist.
It sure does seem to me that it is quite possible that we are at a much later stage than most of us think in this cycle. It seems possible, at least to me, that the ocean’s circulation patterns have already changed. If so, does that not indicate a very troublesome situation that could come much earlier than we expect? Is it even possible to alter the course once these circulation patterns change? If someone reading this has any insight into the answers to these questions, I would love to hear them because, quite franky, I’m a little freaked out right now.