What is the level of carbon emissions across the United States? This is what a recent study published in AGU Advances hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst conducted the first nationwide analysis of carbon emissions across the United States with the goal of putting constraints on previous analyses regarding the amount of carbon emissions across the United States, also known as the carbon cycle. This study holds the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, and the public better understand the United States’ contribution to climate change and the steps that can be taken to mitigate them.
“We need to know how much CO2 is being generated so we can predict how it will respond to climate change,” said Dr. Matthew Winnick, who is an assistant professor of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a co-author on the study. “As temperature rises, we tend to think that a lot of the natural carbon cycle processes will respond to that and potentially amplify climate change.”
For the study, the researchers collected data on carbon emissions across more than 22 million rivers, lakes, and water reservoirs with the goal of developing a model that could put tighter constraints on previous carbon cycle models. In the end, the researchers’ models estimated approximately 120 million metric tons of carbon, which is approximately 25 percent lower than previous models which estimated approximately 159 million metric tons of carbon. The researchers note these more accurate findings could benefit carbon capturing methods to mitigate climate change.
Image displaying the level of detail that went into calculating carbon emissions for the study. (Credit: Matthew Winnick)
“If we want to know if these methods can work, we need to know how much CO2 is in these river systems,” said Dr. Winnick. “We know that CO2 varies wildly — it can change by orders of magnitude within tens of meters along a stream. So having ways to predict these dynamics will really help in evaluating whether and where carbon sequestration might be effective.”
How will carbon emissions across the United States change in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: AGU Advances, EurekAlert!