MSNBC reports on a chilling assessment on climate change from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to researchers, as the Earth warms, its ability to cope with increasing carbon dioxide levels may be diminishing:
...An alarming new study finds that warming signals are stronger, and happening sooner than expected, due to increased human emissions of carbon dioxide and an Earth less able to absorb them.
Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers reported in Tuesday’s edition of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the ability of land and oceans to absorb CO2 were listed as causes of the increase.
... "The new twist here is the demonstration that weakening land and ocean sinks are contributing to the accelerating growth of atmospheric CO2,” said co-author Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University.
The researchers said that human-induced warming had caused changes in wind patterns over the Southern Ocean that brought carbon-rich water toward the surface, reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
On land, where plant growth is the major mechanism for soaking up CO2, droughts have curbed that ability, they stated.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
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