Soil carbon could boost global warming 20 January 05

The complexities of the organic carbon cycle have long bedevilled attempts to predict the magnitude of future global warming. And one of the biggest uncertainties of all was the role of bacteria in the soil in releasing stored carbon into the air as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Now an international team of researchers have discovered – as reported in a paper in this week’s Nature – that as the climate warms more carbon is likely to be released as microbial activity in the soil speeds up. This positive feedback will be bad news for global warming – further intensifying concerns that humanity’s inaction on greenhouse gas emissions may have disastrous consequences. More details from the University of Bristol, which led the research.