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Earth’s Green Carbon Sink on the Wane

Satellite data indicate that carbon storage by plants is decreasing despite climate warming.

…Is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks filling up?ymgerman/iStockphotoThe capacity of plants to act as a carbon sink could be on the decline.
As global temperatures have risen in recent decades, the amount of atmospheric carbon being converted into plant biomass has increased in step. However, in a paper published today in Science, ecologists Maosheng Zhao and Steve Running at the University of Montana in Missoula report a surprising reversal of this trend over the last decade, despite its having been the warmest on record1.
In 2003, a study on which Running was a co-author, led by Ramakrishna Nemani, who is also at the University of Montana, reported an increase in plant productivity between 1982 and 1999. The researchers attributed that trend to a warmer climate and increased solar radiation2. Zhao and Running expected to find a similar increase for 2000-2009…

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Earth’s Green Carbon Sink on the Wane

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What’s Ahead for Astronomy in the Next Decade?

A panel of astronomers recommends which projects should get funding for the next 10 years, including looking for other Earths and how the cosmos was formed.

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technology development papers were submitted by the community to a committee of distinguished astronomers from various parts of the field. The long-awaited findings were introduced via a webcast to 80 different institutions on Friday. A pre-publication copy of the 270-page report is available now from National Academies Press.The committee highlighted three main areas of science, none of which should be too surprising to those who follow the field: Cosmic Dawn, New Worlds and the Physics of the Universe. Or, how did all of this get here, are there planets like Earth nearby, and what makes up the universe? Projects that are well suited to answer these questions, as well as technologically feasible, were given high recommendations.The high-priority missions include a space telescope called WFIRST, or the Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope. This mission would cover two of the key science goals, first by investigating the nature of dark energy, and second by detecting exoplanets. On the ground, the Large…

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What’s Ahead for Astronomy in the Next Decade?

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