Concept of forests as carbon sinks in danger
Posted by Melody in EngineeringNew research by the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette (France) in collaboration with other institutes all over Europe indicates that carbon sequestration with forests might get a big question mark in the future. The team lead by Philippe Ciais found out that during the hot summer of 2003, more carbon was released from forests into the atmosphere then was sequestered by plants. It seems that the plant growth was seriously affected by the heat, leading to a net CO2 flux from the vegetation into the atmosphere (see this news line in "Nature").
As a result, hopes that higher average temperatures might trigger plant growth and therefore the sink effect of the vegetation might turn out to be in vain, as The Guardian writes. Not to talk about possible consequences for the baseline scenario of CDM forestry projects.
By the way: At the same time, new research by Dr Gillett, of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, indicates that the impact of global warming on weather patterns (i.e. like storms or heat waves) might be stronger than expected by current climate models. This comes from the fact that, obviously, the impact of climate change on air pressure is not yet adequately implemented in today's climate models (see EurekAlert referring to a Nature report).
In other words: The influence of global warming on the weather might indeed be higher then expected, and this could even have a positive feedback effect on global warming itself (by reducing the sink capacity of forests).
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I understand the study, climate change means already 'stress' for existing forests in EU, creating extra global warming. But I do not agree that 'the concept of carbon sinks is in danger', as often is the case with headlines, even in this nich of the public domain. Hence new forests will always need CO2 to grow, suequestering CO2. It is just needed to verify how much CO2 is stored; thta should be done anyhow. Maybe the overall storage capacity of trees is lower, because of warming stress. CO2 storage can be enhancd by adding plants too. But forests as carbon sinks remain a valuable element of climate policy.
Well, you are right. I was being a little bit provocative... However, these studies seem to show that the baseline calculation for LULUCF projects is still not as trivial as we would like it to be. Which puts a question mark behind sink projects that are not calculated in a very conservative way.