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Climatologists have not explained what plants do at night and it is a mistake. A new study by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that nutrient uptake by plants in the absence of photosynthesis affects greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.
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"This is good news for what is currently in climate models," said William Riley, a scientist with the Berkeley Lab Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
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The ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide is limited by the availability of soil nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. The more nutrients are abundant, the more plants can benefit from the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Microbes in the soil also play an important role as they compete with plants for nutrients.
In fact, microbes play an important role in the carbon cycle, and interactions between plants, soil and microbes are complex and a challenge for climatologists. Most climate models assume that plants compete for nutrients in the soil only when they require it for photosynthesis, not at night or outside growth periods.
"What most climate models have ignored, is this fairly solid observational literature showing that plants acquire soil nitrogen even when they do not do photosynthesis" said Riley.
Read the original full article: Improving climate models to account for plant behavior gives good news
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