Estimates of plant CO2 uptake rise by nearly one third

&quot;rises by nearly one third&quot; sounds a bit strange to me, more correct would be &quot;Plant CO2 uptake is currently underestimated by one third according to new research&quot;?<p>&gt; <i>The research, detailed in the journal Nature, is expected to improve Earth system simulations that scientists use to predict the future climate, and spotlights the importance of natural carbon sequestration for greenhouse gas mitigation.</i><p>Too bad that we are currently doing the exact opposite (cutting down more forest than is regrown)...

As I understand the article; it’s not that we found out that they’ve _started_ absorbing more CO2; it’s that the previous estimations were flawed and we have new, improved ones.

Interesting that a couple of months ago there was an article which stated the exact opposite:<p>&gt; In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2407.12447" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2407.12447</a> by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.<p>&gt; “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.<p>&gt; “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;environment&#x2F;2024&#x2F;oct&#x2F;14&#x2F;nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;environment&#x2F;2024&#x2F;oct&#x2F;14&#x2F;nature-c...</a>

This is interesting to know, but easy to overstate IMO.<p>Back of the envelope number is 10 kg of CO2 absorbed per maturing tree and year (for ~20 years).<p>This means you would need to plant almost 1000 trees for each person (assuming roughly US&#x2F;EU emission level) to compensate for current emissions only, every 20 years. That just seems infeasible to me, and a factor of 30% is not gonna change this significantly.<p>Renewables + electrification seems much more realistic, when countries like France are already under 5 tons CO2&#x2F;year&#x2F;person by relying on carbon-free electricity (US is at 15!).<p>But it&#x27;s still nice to know because at least planting&#x2F;conserving trees apparently helps even more than expected...

&gt;used new models and measurements to assess GPP from the land at 157 petagrams of carbon per year, up from an estimate of 120 petagrams established 40 years ago and currently used in most estimates of Earth’s carbon cycle<p>&gt;One petagram equals 1 billion metric tons, which is roughly the amount of CO2 emitted each year from 238 million gas-powered passenger vehicles.<p>this sounds pretty significant. Any particular reason why it hasn&#x27;t been updated for the last 40y?

It&#x27;s a useful datapoint in understanding the Earth&#x27;s carbon cycle, but that&#x27;s all - and it in no way changes the fact that the sum total of current human activity is dragging that cycle out of equilibrium by about 2.5-3ppm per year, or 8-10%ish per decade.

If it has been underestimated then that means climate models have been using the bad, underestimated data, so they need to be updated and run to see where we are at, corrrect?

We know that soils seem to absorb less carbon as plant absorb more [0].<p>It&#x27;s fascinating to see all those studies improving our limited understanding of the biosphere.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-021-03306-8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-021-03306-8</a>

&gt; Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to a new assessment developed by scientists.<p>So that means our supposed CO2 problem is 31% smaller than we previously thought?

Unfortunately this doesn&#x27;t mean much for the practical problem, because most of that uptake is is dumped into the atmosphere again when the plant dies and rots.<p>It&#x27;s like we&#x27;ve got a bathtub where the water level is rising, because we won&#x27;t turn off the tap and the drain is only so big. We can lower the apparent water-level by throwing in a bunch of plant-sponges, but we can&#x27;t just keep adding more indefinitely.

This kind of change is deeply worrying, because on the face of it, it implies means estimates of climate change are potentially rather unsound - such large changes in mechanisms central to change - and so climate change could be much worse than we expect.<p>If climate change isn&#x27;t so bad, then phew, but if it&#x27;s actually <i>worse</i>, then we are in even more deadly trouble than we already are.

We could plant, cut down and burn trees for the energy, in a circle, and keep carbon levels in our atmosphere the same, instead of digging up new carbon from the ground and burning it. We will have to bury carbon back under the ground at some point.

If trees are doing more work then we estimated in simulations, then good&#x2F;bad, as we cut down forest we are doing more damage.<p>But also, since trees do more work than we thought, then planting more will have bigger impact than past estimates.

&gt; Pan-tropical rainforests accounted for the biggest difference between previous estimates and the new figures, a finding that was corroborated by ground measurements, Gu said. The discovery suggests that rainforests are a more important natural carbon sink than previously estimated using satellite data.<p>And yet, we stand by on the sidelines while narco, wood and cattle organized crime cartels contaminate, log and burn down the rainforests.<p>IMHO, at least the endangered rainforest belts should be placed under international supervision with a joint military cooperative on a shoot-to-kill order against these kinds of criminals. Think of an UN Blue Helmets mission, but not as a toothless &quot;peacekeper corps&quot; like the usual useless bullshit. The very ability of Earth to provide for human life hinges to a significant part on the continued existence and health of the rainforest ecosystem, and it is obvious now that many of the countries in which these forests lie are fundamentally incapable of maintaining this shared resource.

Ok guys, this climate change stuff is temporarily off the menu until we win the great power AI war with China. Same goes for nuclear power. Send the memo out that we love nuclear power now after 40 years of hating it.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;96aa8d1a-bbf1-4b35-8680-d1fef36ef067" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;96aa8d1a-bbf1-4b35-8680-d1fef36ef...</a>

It feels like we can never catch a break. If we do something like underestimate the amount of CO2 plants absorb it still does nothing to change our fate.<p>Is there <i>anything</i> in our climate models that if we got wrong would drastically reduce the estimated severity of long term impacts from climate?

Maybe we should pay for working greening efforts - aka artifical algea blooms ontop of the Marianna trench.<p>Iron, phosphates, Air pumps and light transmitted into the depths where the growthcube rises.<p>Have a rainforest fall into the depths forever every hour.

I thought I&#x27;d read in the past that an uptake in C02 for plants&#x2F;trees (and therefore faster growing) results in a weaker structure which doesn&#x27;t stand up to the environment as well as slower growing trees.

What does that mean for all the existing simulations that use the &quot;wrong&quot; values?<p>BTW: are there any open source climate models&#x2F;simulations?

CO2 is food for plants

Ah the greening earth FUD spread by big oil circa 2000s<p>HN is playing all the greatest hits of denialism this week!

So perhaps the alarmist climate models were incorrect and most be corrected before they are used to shape public policy?

Too bad we are currently too busy scaling up wars all over the place to bother with the planet state.

Perfect. More fodder for the anti-science idiots to prove how clean air isn&#x27;t a big deal.