Greenhouse Gas Sinks

The many and varied sinks for greenhouse gases on Earth are nothing less than vital to life as we know it. For millennia they have maintained relatively balanced concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in our atmosphere. Even when humankind drastically increased greenhouse emissions following the industrial revolution, many of the sinks responded by increasing their uptake rates, and so buffered our headlong drive towards enhanced global warming. Currently, the earth's carbon sinks reabsorb around half of all the extra carbon dioxide human activities add to the atmosphere each year. These sinks, though, are not infinite. Nor are they immune to climate change. How will they respond to global warming in the 21st century? Will higher temperatures release carbon locked in soils for centuries? How might drought in the Amazon affect the forest carbon sink? Will warmer oceans mean less or more uptake of carbon dioxide? These and other big questions in climate change science are discussed in this first comprehensive handbook of the earth's sinks for greenhouse gases.