Keeling Curve Beginning To Shift; Planet's "Respiration" Rates Changing @ Seasonal CO2 Highs & Lows

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Since the Industrial Revolution, humans activities have driven up CO2 in the atmosphere from 280 parts per million (ppm) to over 400 ppm for the first time in at least 400,000 years. The rise has been accurately measured, day-by-day and season-by-season since the late 1950s. Scientists have tracked a seasonal cycle where plants suck up CO2 over late spring and summer before releasing it back into the atmosphere when they die off in the fall.

There’s been a curious shift over that time. While CO2 has risen steadily — as illustrated by the iconic Keeling Curve — the difference between the seasonal high measurements taken in the spring and the seasonal low measurements taken in the fall has been getting wider with each passing year. Instead of rising at the same rate, the seasonal high has been rising faster than the seasonal low.

The trend has been most extreme in the high northern latitudes, where the gap between the seasonal high and the seasonal low in a given year is now up to 25 percent greater than it was since recordkeeping began. “Atmospheric CO2 measurements show how the patient ‘Earth’ is doing,” Matthias Forkel, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, said. Borrowing a phrase from a 2013 article, he said, “the ‘biosphere is hyperventilating.’”

The new research ties the difference to plants colonizing new habitat such as formerly barren tundra. Other plants such as trees in boreal forests could also be growing faster. That’s allowing them to take up more CO2 for now, but it also comes with a cascade of changes that are reshaping the face of region.

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-earth-hyperventilate-20026