One of the regular complaints of climate change doubters and skeptics is that scientific projections of a dire future are too heavily based on computer simulations, or models, which — they say — rest on a variety of questionable assumptions.
But a major climate change study published Thursday relied not on models but experimental data — a 26-year record of observations, no less — to reach a conclusion perhaps just as worrying. The research, tracking the emissions of carbon from artificially heated plots of a forest in Massachusetts, reinforces fears about the possibility of a climate change “feedback” involving the planet’s soils, one that could pile on top of and substantially worsen the ongoing warming trend triggered by the burning of fossil fuels.
“The study is one of the longest if not the longest climate change ecosystem experiment, beyond the one we are running in our own planet,” said Pep Canadell, an expert on the Earth’s carbon cycle at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia. He was not part of the research. Read more of the article here.
Source: One of the oldest climate change experiments has led to a troubling conclusion – The Washington Post