Global warming leads to more carbon sinks – Rising because of that?
Guest “For the sake of peat!” by David Middleton
Are new carbon sinks emerging in the Arctic?
5.5.2022
Helsingin yliopisto
Global warming could lead to the spread of vegetation on Arctic peatlands. An international research team has discovered signs of ‘proto-peat’, which could be the beginning of new peatlands.
In 2018, an international research team searched for soil samples in three locations around the Isfjorden fjord in Svalbard, part of Norway. The same phenomenon was observed at each drilling site: the mineral soil was covered with a thin layer of organic matter. In other words, this layer contains a lot of carbon extracted from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
Research team led by researcher Minna Valiranta from the University of Helsinki named ‘proto peat’ for such organic soil deposits, composed mainly of mosses, that form in increasingly warm Arctic climates.
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“If this peat-generating process is widespread, then an unexpected carbon sink, or a population of vegetation that helps mitigate climate change, could be in the process of forming itself up north. . This reservoir has not been included in the ecosystem and atmosphere model, as it has traditionally been assumed that no new peatlands have formed,” notes Väliranta.
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Original article
Juselius, T., Ravolainen, V., Zhang, H. et al. Beginning carbon stock, soil organic accumulation patterns and key drivers in High Arctic Svalbard, Norway. Scientific representative twelfth, 4679 (in 2022).
It seems that the Earth knows what to do with CO2… Just like the plastic in this classic George Carlin sketch: