A new study finds that the faster warming of winter temperatures compared to summer, known as asymmetric warming, significantly impacts microbial activity in soils on the Tibetan Plateau. This finding has implications for soil carbon storage, which is already threatened by climate change.
Climate change is raising winter temperatures faster than those of summer, especially in high-altitude areas. This “asymmetric” warming could spell trouble for the vast amount of carbon stored in soils there by altering microbial activity more than expected.if better managed. But soil carbon is threatened by climate change .
After a decade of this treatment between 2011 and 2020, the researchers tested microbial activity of samples from the different soils. They focused on two measures in particular: growth rate and an indicator of how the organisms are using carbon, known as carbon use efficiency.
“Their findings suggest that soil carbon storage likely will decrease, reducing the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to sequester carbon and degrading the soil’s efficacy for nature-based solutions to climate change,” says Rath says the fact that current models don’t take asymmetric warming into account means we are probably underestimating soil carbon losses due to climate change. However, he says the findings may only apply to soils from frigid ecosystems, and more research is needed to understand exactly what these changes in microbial activity mean for carbon.
Environmental Studies Climate Change Soil Carbon Microbial Activity Asymmetric Warming Tibetan Plateau
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