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Bob Bingham Blog page.

A series of opinion pieces on, mostly climate change and related subjects to do with New Zealand.

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In a 2C to 3C warmer world, more like the Pliocene epoch, what can we expect to happen to our trees?

1/10/2014

6 Comments

 
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For the last million years the Earth’s temperature has had a cyclical pattern of ice ages and warm periods (we are now in a warm time) and the cooler periods would have been 8C cooler. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that drives temperature change and during these cycles CO2 cycled through a range of 280 parts per million in a warm period down to 180 parts per million in an ice age. In the depths of an ice age the world would have had thick glaciers down to Scotland or New York and the sea level would have been 120 meters lower than today.

Our atmosphere now holds CO2 at a level of 400 parts per million and to get an idea of what the climate would be like we need to go back 2.5 million years or further to the Pliocene epoch as that was the last time we had CO2 at this level.


If you think that this scenario is improbable, travel to a place where the temperature is about 3C different from where you live, which would normally be about 1000 Klm (650miles) North or South, and look at the trees. They will be mostly different and they are suited to their region.

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The huge pulse of CO2 we have put into the atmosphere is, in geological terms, so short that it is like being hit by a meteor. From 280 ppm to 400 ppm in one hundred years is unlike any natural event at all and we are headed for 450 ppm in the near future. The Earths atmospheric temperature has not caught up with the changes as 90% of the heat has gone into the oceans and although the ice is melting it takes time to melt a block of ice. Nevertheless the surface temperature has increased by 0.8C and is going up steadily so that we can expect to see some dramatic changes in our lifetime as the inertia in the system gathers speed.

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The IPCC projections shown in the graph for CO2 emissions continuing at the current rate of ‘business as usual’ indicate a CO2 level of around 700 to 1000 ppm of CO2 at the end of the century with a temperature 2C higher and climbing steadily so using the Pliocene epoch as a model for our future climate is a realistic assumption.
The big action with climate change is in the oceans, but here we are looking at the land and plant life and using trees as an example, we can anticipate how they will fare in the new climate.


The trees of the Pliocene period were similar, but different, to the trees of today and were adapted to the climate that went with it. Those trees had taken hundreds of thousands of years to evolve to match those conditions. The trees we have today are adapted to a CO2 level of 280 PPM and a climate 0.8C cooler than todays and are rapidly going into conditions 2C warmer and with dramatically changed rainfall conditions of either drought or flood.

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 We know that trees like CO2 and will grow faster if they get more of it, but what is not so well known is that there are other elements that a tree needs to make use of this extra stimulus. One of these is nutrients and trees often grow in quite poor soil and if they grow too fast they will run out of food and will then starve.  The second and most important element is water. With the extra CO2 come higher temperatures and a change in climate. The warmer climate causes the soil to dry more quickly and a change in weather pattern can lead to extended periods without rain and this will stress the tree and weaken it. At the same time, the change in climate can also lead to an increase in new diseases and insects which can damage the tree. In its weakened state the tree is overcome with disease and can die. 

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As trees die they become fuel for forest fires. To make the situation worse, the combination of a warmer climate and increased drought dries the forest out and the whole area becomes more susceptible to huge destructive fires.


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A less known problem comes from the density of air in a warmer climate. For every 1C increase in temperature the atmosphere holds 8% more moisture and water is 800 times denser than air. The result is that a warm moist wind has a lot more destructive power than a drier wind of the same speed. The problem here is that trees are adapted to their region and have leaf canopies and root structures suitable for the original climatic conditions. If they have to deal with a storm more suited to a region thousands of miles away their root system will not hold and they will be blown over. 

All round the world countries are reporting that species of trees are already suffering and dying in huge numbers and the situation can only get worse as the temperature increases in the future. 

6 Comments
Bob Bristow
6/10/2014 07:49:00 am

Amazing that we (mankind) have engineered the atmospheric CO2 to what it was 2.5 million years ago by releasing the carbon in fossils, of bygone eras. Aligned with your comments on the delay of land temperature rise, by heat being stored in the ocean, this latest report using ARGO data confirms (Climate Central Oct 5th 2014)

“Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, we'd still have an ocean that is warmer than the ocean of 1950, and that heat commits us to a warmer climate,”

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oceans-getting-hotter-than-anybody-realized-18139

Reply
Bob Bingham
8/10/2014 10:05:01 am

Its not a good scenario is it? The next thirty years should be pretty interesting to say the least. A friend videoed one of my talks on climate change and put it on YouTube. It takes half an hour but if you stick it past the first five minutes it gets better, Bob. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=climate+change+new+zealand+bob+bingham

If the link does not work try 'climate change New Zealand bob bingham'

Reply
Bob Bristow
18/10/2014 07:29:21 am

It should be noted that the 2°C - 3°C prediction is a global average anomaly, in fact in Barrow, Alaska, U.S.A where there is a NOAA Scientific monitoring station, the temperature has already increased a staggering +7°C over a climatic period of 30 years, due to amplifying features such as loss of Albedo, increased methane from melting permafrost. Luckily in New Zealand we are buffeted from extreme increases - but will catch up in time.

Once the Arctic summer sea ice is gone (a few years later) and albedo lost, we will see even greater rises.

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/10/ice-loss-sends-alaskan-temperatures-soaring/

Reply
Bob Bristow link
18/10/2014 09:07:46 am

OOps did I say buffeted - wrong word please read buffered

Reply
Kevin Hester
22/12/2015 04:07:24 pm

Whilst conducting the greatest experiment of all time there are, as the mass murderer Donald Rumsfield was want to say " Known knowns and known unknowns.
What we do know is that the news is all bad and that there is a likely hood of more positive feedback loops making this problem worse than this dire link indicates.

Reply
Bob Bingham
23/12/2015 05:07:54 pm

If the world ever gets the big polluting industries under control they are in for a big shock. http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/latest-posts--news/2-c-temperature-rise-in-north

Reply



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    Bob Bingham 

    Occasional blog posts on topical news items concerning the climate.  Please click the RSS feed to receive updates.

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