A new study by scientists says that plants around the world are taking in about 31% more carbon dioxide than was thought before. This has upset the climate change CO2 alarmists a lot! The new research destroys their already ridiculous theories and lies.
Scientists use Earth system simulations to guess what the future climate will be like. This study, which was published in the journal Nature, shows how important natural carbon sequestration is for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Terrestrial Gross Primary Production, or GPP, is the amount of CO2 that plants take out of the air through photosynthesis. It’s the biggest exchange of carbon between the land and the air in the world. Most of the time, GPP is given in terms of petagrams of carbon per year. One petagram is equal to one billion metric tons, which is about the same amount of CO2 that 238 million gas-powered cars and trucks put into the air every year.
Scientists from Cornell University and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used new models and measurements to find that GPP from the land is 157 petagrams of carbon per year. This is higher than the estimate of 120 petagrams made 40 years ago and is still used in most calculations of the Earth’s carbon cycle. The paper called “Terrestrial Photosynthesis Inferred from Plant Carbonyl Sulfide Uptake” talks about the results.
The results are described in the paper, “Terrestrial Photosynthesis Inferred from Plant Carbonyl Sulfide Uptake.”
An integrated model was made by researchers that shows how the chemical compound carbonyl sulfide (OCS) moves from the air into leaf chloroplasts. Leaf chloroplasts are the factories inside plant cells that do photosynthesis. Tracking OCS helped the researchers figure out how much photosynthetic activity there was. The compound moves through a leaf in a way that is similar to CO2 diffusion. It is related to photosynthesis and is easier to track and measure than CO2 diffusion. To do these things, OCS has been used as a stand-in for photosynthesis in plants and leaves. This research showed that OCS is a good way to figure out photosynthesis on a large scale and over a long period of time. This makes it a reliable way to measure GPP around the world.
The team built the model with plant data from a number of different sources. The LeafWeb database was one of the sources. It was set up at ORNL to help the DOE Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Scientific Focus Area, or TES-SFA. Scientists from all over the world send information to LeafWeb about photosynthetic traits so that carbon cycle models can be better understood. Scientists made sure the model results were correct by comparing them with detailed information from environmental monitoring towers instead of using satellites, which can have trouble seeing things because of clouds, especially in the tropics.
A key part of the new estimate is a better understanding of mesophyll diffusion, which is the process by which OCS and CO2 move from leaves to chloroplasts, which is where carbon fixation takes place. To understand how well plants are doing photosynthesis and even how they might be able to adapt to changing environments, you need to know about mesophyll diffusion.
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