Climatology: Peat and Methane

[Cedars]

Can you support this with data?

 

Sure Freezee.... Its from YOUR link

 

Patrick Crill, Complex Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA - A decade of carbon gas exchange between the atmosphere and a temperate poor fen.

Northern peatlands above 40o N have accumulated roughly 450 Gt C or about 30% of the total world pool of soil C even though aboveground net primary productivity is lower than that of other northern ecosystems. This near surface carbon storage could be significantly sensitive to, as well as directly affect, feedbacks driven by changing climate that determine the distribution of C between tropospheric and terrestrial reservoirs.

 

Development of long term datasets are important in evaluating the variable responses of natural systems to climatic forcing. Aspects of C exchange have been measured in Sallie's Fen, NH, U.S.A. since 1989. The objectives are to demonstrate relationships between photosynthetically active radiation, temperature and net C exchange and to utilize these relationships to interpolate exchange rates between infrequent direct chamber measurements and to extrapolate the observations between years. The techniques are important to quantify the magnitude and variability in C balance over annual and multi-year timescales.

 

Results of the C balance model suggest that Sallie's Fen has been a sink of CO2 from the atmosphere with most (52 - 91 gC-CO2 /m2) fixed in the summer and a consistent loss of 12-19 gC-CO2 /m2 in the winter. However, when CH4 emissions (48-122 gC-CH4 /m2) and DOC export (3 gC /m2) are added to the total, Sallie's Fen lost C in 1994 and was a weak sink of C in other years.

 

OK I was wrong about one thing. They do give a total time frame.

 

One year out of 10 Sallies Fen had some loss.

 

That was from your link and your chosen highlight on Methane 3 or 4 posts ago.

 

Millenium Wetland Event

[freeztar]

The bold part here that you highlight, is this statement:

 

"Sallie's Fen lost C in 1994 and was a weak sink of C in other years."

 

I'm not denying the carbon storing potential of peat lands.

 

What is your interpretation of the phrase "weak sink"?

[lemit]

I have two questions.

 

First, can anyone think of the name of the slush associated with permafrost? It has a peculiar name, and is a terrible nuisance, releasing methane all the time.

 

Second, and I think this might be for Cedars: why has this thread become, in the title of each post, "The GW denialists are winning" when it started out differently? Why did you change that, and how?

 

Oops! That's three questions. Sorry.

 

--lemit

[Cedars]

The bold part here that you highlight, is this statement:

 

"Sallie's Fen lost C in 1994 and was a weak sink of C in other years."

 

I'm not denying the carbon storing potential of peat lands.

 

What is your interpretation of the phrase "weak sink"?

 

Doesnt matter what weak means for the purpose of this segment/thread. It is a sink.

[freeztar]

why has this thread become, in the title of each post, "The GW denialists are winning" when it started out differently? Why did you change that, and how?

The posts in this thread originally came from the thread "The GW Denialists are winning", hence the title automatically attached to each post.

[freeztar]

doesnt matter what weak means for the purpose of this segment/thread. It is a sink.

 

ok. :naughty:

[lemit]

Thanks, Freeztar, for answering one of my questions. Any help with the other one? That stuff, the slush of thawed Permafrost, the stuff that bedeviled the builders of the Alaskan highway, the builders of the trans-Alaskan pipeline, and my great-uncle in northern Montana, whose ranch on the Kootenai had quite a bit of permafrost, peat, and the quicksand-like . . . .

 

Special thanks to anybody who can help me remember that word.

--lemit