2015 El Nino 3 Gt Of Carbon Released From Drought-Stressed Forests In Amazon, Africa, Indonesia
During the last El Niño, global average temperatures spiked to more than 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time on record, and carbon dioxide levels increased at a record pace.
Now, scientists working with data from a carbon-tracking satellite have figured out where most of that CO2 surge came from. The source was three massive tropical forest regions, in different parts of the world, that each responded to the rising temperatures in a very different way.
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Even before the findings announced by NASA last week from the satellite data analyses, scientists had already attributed nearly all of the record 2015 warmth to the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. They also knew that, in 2015 and 2016, CO2 was building up faster in the atmosphere, which was puzzling, because emissions from human sources weren't increasing at that pace.
Scientists suspected that the extra warming boost caused by El Niño was a factor, and the new satellite data on CO2 confirms it, said Annmarie Eldering, the deputy project scientist for the NASA/JPL OCO-2 mission, which tracks CO2 by measuring slight changes in the reflectivity of the atmosphere. "We know there's variability in the natural system, but it's not driving the direction of change," she said. "More and longer droughts will increase CO2, which will warm Earth even more."
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17102017/forests-climate-change-el-nino-amazon-tropical-carbon-emissions-indonesia-africa