April Flowers for redOrbit.com
In the last 50 years, man has quadrupled his CO2 output, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. That is a startling and sobering concept. So far, though, Mother Nature seems to be keeping pace.
In a new study released August 2, 2012, in the journal Nature, researchers from NOAA and the University of Colorado assert that Earth’s carbon sinks continue to soak up roughly half of the carbon output. Carbon sinks are areas of carbon storage, whether by land or sea. The scientists analyzed 50 years of global carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements and found that the processes by which the planet’s oceans and ecosystems absorb greenhouse gas are not yet at capacity.
“Globally, these carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ have roughly kept pace with emissions from human activities, continuing to draw about half of the emitted CO2 back out of the atmosphere. However, we do not expect this to continue indefinitely,” said NOAA’s Pieter Tans, a climate researcher with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
“What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ashley Ballantyne, University of Colorado post-doctoral researcher and lead author agrees. “How long this will continue, we don’t know.”
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