Tag Archives: valier galy

River Buries Permafrost Carbon at Sea

By Guest PostOctober 8, 2015Environmentaltai territory, arctic landscape, arctic permafrost, carbon dioxide, CO2 emissions, frozen ground, mackenzie river, mendeleyev oil refinery, organic carbon, river, samples, sea, solo space flight, valier galy

New study traces the fate of carbon stored in thawing Arctic soils

As temperatures rise, some of the organic carbon stored in Arctic permafrost meets an unexpected fate—burial at sea. As many as 2.2 million metric tons of organic carbon per year are swept along by a single river system into Arctic Ocean sediment, according to a new study an international team of researchers published in Nature. This process locks away carbon dioxide (CO₂) – a greenhouse gas – and helps stabilize the earth’s CO₂ levels over time, and it may help scientists better predict how the natural carbon cycle will interplay with the surge of CO₂emissions due to human activities. (more…)

Long-Term Carbon Storage in Ganges Basin May Portend Global Warming Worsening

By Guest PostNovember 9, 2011Environment4 degree c warming, atmosphere, Bangladesh, basin, brahmaputra river, carbon, carbon residence time, climate projections, CO2, co2 release into the atmosphere, earth, environmental changes, ganges brahmaputra system, ganges system, gangetic floodplain, global carbon cycle, global warming, himalayan range, himalayas, indian ocean, intergovernmental panel on climate change, ipcc, kali gandaki river, low latitude, monsoon floods, nature geoscience, nepal, ocean, organic carbon, pool of carbon, radiocarbon content of river sediments, rates of physical erosion and sediment transport, sediments of the ganges brahmaputra basin, soils, sources of terrestrial biospheric carbon, southern flank of the himalayas, summer monsoon, timothy eglinton, tropical system, valier galy, whoi, woods hole oceanographic institution

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists have found that carbon is stored in the soils and sediments of the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin for a surprisingly long time, making it likely that global warming could destabilize the pool of carbon there and in similar places on Earth, potentially increasing the rate of CO₂ release into the atmosphere.

The study, published in the current online edition of Nature Geoscience, examined the radiocarbon content of river sediments collected from the Ganges-Brahmaputra system draining the Himalayas. The basin, the scientists say, “represents one of the largest sources of terrestrial biospheric carbon to the ocean.” (more…)