{"id":356988,"date":"2024-12-21T16:33:59","date_gmt":"2024-12-21T15:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=356988"},"modified":"2024-12-21T16:34:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T15:34:01","slug":"surprise-we-thought-trees-emitted-methane-but-instead-they-absorb-it-what-else-dont-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=356988","title":{"rendered":"Surprise! We thought trees emitted methane, but instead they absorb it\u2026 (What else don\u2019t we know?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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wallup.net<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Quick! Set up a trillion-dollar market and figure out the science later<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We got it wrong for so long<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methane is supposedly 80 times more powerful as CO2 over the short term, and we are already feeding our cows seaweed and dubious additives like Bovaer\u00ae to reduce it, and we\u2019re trying to make steaks in labs,<\/a> and create burgers out of crickets. But it turns out, the experts were wrong, yet again, and trees are absorbing more methane than they emit. So just like that, there is a major new sink to remove methane from the air, and it\u2019s been there all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny thing is that for years everyone was measuring the air at the bottom of the tree trunk and\u00a0finding methane emissions<\/a>, but when Vincent Gauci et al measured 1 \u2013 2 metres further up the tree, not only did the methane emissions shrink to nothing, but the gas also started to disappear from the air around the trunk. Apparently, bacteria under the bark were dining on the methane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team looked at trees in Brazil, Panama, United Kingdom and Sweden and estimate that all the worlds trees might already be absorbing as much as 50 million tons of methane, about as much as\u201d is coming out of all the worlds landfill sites\u201d, or roughly equivalent to half the worlds cows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists got this wrong, every way they could<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Researchers used to think trees did nothing much with methane, but around 2006 some scientists were surprised to discover that trees emitted methane, especially in swampy areas.  In 2017 a paper showed wetland trees gave out a lot of methane, \u201clike a chimney\u201d:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u201cIn the seasonally flooded part of the Amazon, the trees become a massive chimney for pumping out methane,\u201d<\/strong> says one researcher.<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bad news<\/a> back then, was that most of the world\u2019s estimated 3 trillion trees emitted methane at least some of the time. If it had have been Porches instead, we\u2019d have heard all about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since methane is supposedly responsible for a quarter of global warming, you\u2019d think the science industrial complex would have been all over this so they could save the world. Apparently forest scientists even used to entertain students by setting fire to the gases hissing from the trunks in the Amazon, so it\u2019s not like \u201cnobody knew\u201d. Everyone knew, but apparently no one really wanted to announce bad news about their forest friends and give the deniers ammunition to cut down a tree, so people didn\u2019t want to look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the first was Vincent Gauci, then at the UK\u2019s Open University and now at Birmingham University. \u201cWhen I was first working on this, it was poo-pooed,\u201d he says. When Pangala, then also at The Open University, made her first measurements of trees emitting methane in the swamps of Borneo, she had the same experience. Despite finding that the trees increased standard estimates of emissions from the swamps sevenfold, \u201cit took 18 months to get it published,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were rejected by several journals. They just weren\u2019t interested.\u201d \u2014 e360Yale<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So prejudice and politicized funding stopped humans from figuring what trees were really doing for ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same Vincent Gauci went back and did the study higher up the trees only to find the exact opposite of what they expected and had read in peer reviewed papers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trees may be even bigger climate heroes than we thought<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By Laura Allen, ScienceNewsExplores<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trees, too, were known to release methane, especially those growing in wet soils. These trees take up the gas from soil and emit it through their trunks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vincent Gauci studies methane emission from trees. He\u2019s an environmental scientist at the University of Birmingham in England. Gauci knew trees in wet places, such as the tropics, give off methane from their trunks. Next, he wanted to study its release from trees in drier soils. He expected these upland trees would give off methane, though less than those at wetter sites. But that\u2019s not what he found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were surprised to see the exact opposite,\u201d says Gauci. The trees were actually taking in methane. Think of how many trees there are on the planet, he notes. That could add up to a lot of methane being removed from the air.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very little is known about these microbes, says Gauci. In fact, little is known about gas exchange in tree bark and branch surfaces. And those surfaces add up to a huge area. \u201cIf we were to unwrap all the trees and roll them flat, they would basically cover the entire Earth\u2019s land surface,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This discovery may have doubled<\/em> the amount of methane that the land absorbs (that we know about).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research is important and eye-opening, says Kazuhiko Terazawa, a forest ecologist. He studies trees and methane at the Hokkaido Research Organization in Japan. The study\u2019s estimates for how much methane trees might take up surprised him. If correct, he says, this means the land absorbs nearly twice as much methane as people had thought it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, the methane was taken up a lot faster in the tropics than in colder places like England and Sweden. What took just a few minutes in Panama took 20 minutes in Europe. Naturally, bacteria work faster in the warmth. It follows then, though no one said as much, that in a warmer world, methane will be removed from the atmosphere even faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using data from the four sites, the team estimated how much methane all the world\u2019s forests may be absorbing. It might be as much as 50 million tons, they calculated. \u201cIt\u2019s a sizable chunk,\u201d says Gauci. That\u2019s about as much methane as wafts from all the world\u2019s landfills<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In preindustrial times some 50 million bison may have roamed North America emitting methane for thousands of years without reaching a \u201ctipping point\u201d, turning Earth into Venus or causing the sixth mass extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the press release: Trees act like a chimney\u2026<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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POST NOTE: There is bound to be a benefit to the trees.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For all we know, the microbes that feed on methane probably help the trees in some way. Perhaps they defend the bark from fungus, or produce some nutrient trees need, or perhaps they help in moisture control. Who knows? In which case, the trees acting like chimney-pumps for methane are just feeding the good guys in the bark higher up the tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had to bet, I\u2019d put money on the healthy tree biome stopping fungal rot of some sort, or perhaps producing some phytochemical trees need, like a pesticide that makes chewing bark less fun for beetles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> And lets not forget it was only this year that we realized 90% of the latest surge in methane<\/a> comes from microbes around the world, not from us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

REFERENCES<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Bark-dwelling methanotrophic bacteria decrease methane emissions from trees,<\/a> Nature Communications<\/em>, DOI: 10.1038\/s41467-021-22333-7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauci, V., Pangala, S.R., Shenkin, A. et al.<\/em> Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces. <\/a>Nature<\/em> (2024). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-024-07592-w<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methane is supposedly 80 times more powerful as CO2 over the short term, and we are already feeding our cows seaweed and dubious additives like Bovaer\u00ae to reduce it, and we\u2019re trying to make\u00a0steaks in labs,\u00a0and create burgers out of crickets. But it turns out, the experts were wrong, yet again, and trees are absorbing more methane than they emit. So just like that, there is a major new sink to remove methane from the air, and it\u2019s been there all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":356996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691832203,691829997,691826963,691818694,691832202],"class_list":{"0":"post-356988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-bacteria","9":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","10":"tag-methane-ch4","11":"tag-trees","12":"tag-trillion-dollar-market","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0196072-oak_trees-grass-trees-moss-green-ancient-nature-landscape.jpg?fit=1600%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1uRS","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":336393,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=336393","url_meta":{"origin":356988,"position":0},"title":"US-EU methane rules won\u2019t meaningfully impact temperatures","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/07\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency published new methane emissions regulations for the oil and gas industry. The European Union enacted new rules to reduce methane emissions from the energy sector in May. Agriculture is also being targeted regarding methane. 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Discussing parts per million or percentages with several zeros can become meaningless. Sometimes analogies are helpful. 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It\u2019s one of those narratives that has become a continuous drumbeat in the progressive press. 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