Carbon dioxide in atmosphere increasing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_sc/carbon_increase;_ylt=AvQ_GTonnw2vXiE6aOWJe6kPLBIF

Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

"It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."

Trenberth noted that carbon dioxide is not the whole story — methane emissions have declined, so total greenhouse gases are not increasing as much as carbon dioxide alone. Also, he added, other pollution plays a role by cooling.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071022/sc_afp/climatewarmingocean;_ylt=ApMnoQWCCbrrd_m96b.ms.0PLBIF

The world's oceans may be losing their ability to soak up extra carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, with the risk that this will help stoke global warming, two new studies say.

Absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the North Atlantic plunged by half between the mid-1990s and 2002-5, British researchers say in a paper published in the November issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Ute Schuster, who led the research with Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences, admitted she was astonished by the data.

"Such large changes are a tremendous surprise. We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean's great mass," Schuster was quoted by the university in a press release Monday as saying.

Research last year pointed to rising acidification of the oceans as a result of CO2 uptake, highlighting the risk of carbon saturation as well as a looming peril for biodiversity.