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Gizmorama - April 14, 2014
Good Morning, Lately, it seems that climatologists have had nothing but bad news for us. Here's the latest - thawing permafrost may accelerate global warming.
First, an extra-long winter, now this!
Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
ErinP.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click
GopherArchives****- Quality of food to decline as CO2 levels go up -*DAVIS, Calif. (UPI) - If CO2 levels continue to rise as expected, staple crops like wheat, barley and potatoes could become less nutritious. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, conducted a field study showing wheat crops were less efficient at converting nitrates into proteins under conditions of heightened CO2 levels. Previous studies have shown that CO2 inhibits the assimilation of nitrates in plants, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been demonstrated in field-planted crops. "Food quality is declining under the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that we are experiencing," said Arnold Bloom, lead author of the new study and a professor in UC-Davis's Department of Plant Sciences. "Several explanations for this decline have been put forward, but this is the first study to demonstrate that elevated carbon dioxide inhibits the conversion of nitrate into protein in a field-grown crop," he added. Bloom and his fellow researchers -- including two scientists from the USDA's Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center in Arizona -- estimate that in the coming decades the proteins available for human consumption in wheat, rice, tubers and other grains will decline by roughly 3 percent. This latest study, published in the online journal Nature Climate Change, arrives only a few weeks after a group of international scientists estimated crop yields will decline by 2 percent each decade as the planet continues to warm.
*-- Thawing permafrost may accelerate global warming --*TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (UPI) - More bad news from climatologists: as permafrost in the polar regions melts, methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, thereby accelerating global warming. Permafrost is comprised of the soil and mosses that usually remain frozen year round near the North and South Poles. But as global temperatures have creeped higher -- especially near the poles -- polar permafrost has thawed, allowing decomposing organic matter to release increased amounts of methane into the air. The planet-warming capabilities of methane are 33 times stronger than those of CO2. Researchers at Florida State University say it's not just a hypothetical; it's already happening. In traveling to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples, researchers showed that permafrost is decomposing more rapidly, meaning more methane and other gasses are escaping at heightened rates. Jeff Chanton, an oceanography professor at Florida State who led the research, says that should the permafrost melt completely, the atmosphere would experience five times the current levels of methane. "The world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only add to our problems," he added. The findings of Chanton and his fellow researchers were recently featured in the newest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We've known for a while now that permafrost is thawing," said the paper's lead author, Suzanne Hodgkins, a doctoral student chemical oceanography at Florida State. "But what we've found is that the associated changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane."
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