Dear Tom,
Increased carbon dioxide (CO2) makes plants grow faster, and plants remove CO2 from the air. Faster growth equals more CO2 removal. Won’t this solve the problem of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere?
Ron Bitterman
Dear Ron,
That’s what was believed, but a new study by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, has shown just the opposite to be true.
Researchers monitored soils exposed to open air and to air in which CO2 levels had been artificially doubled. They found that plants grew faster in the CO2-enhanced atmosphere, as expected, but decomposition of plant matter by microbes in the soil also accelerated, and that produced CO2 that escaped into the atmosphere.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
