The Effect of Elevated CO2 on Tomato Plant Lateral Root Growth

Published June 21, 2013

Elevated CO2 increased both the number and length of the roots, and with more and longer lateral roots in a future CO2-enriched atmosphere, tomato plants (and likely other plants as well) should be better equipped to take up both major and micro nutrients from the soils in which they grow, making them both bigger and better and more apt to produce larger and more nutritious fruit … and more of it… Read More
 

How Corals Are Able to Tolerate Significant Seawater Acidification (18 Jun 2013)
It’s a complex process; but it appears to be capable of doing what needs to be done, as the findings of this paper suggest that “reef corals may mitigate the effects of seawater acidification by regulating pH in the subcalicoblastic medium”… Read More

Another Test of CMIP5 Models: What Problems Were Detected? (18 Jun 2013)
With 21 scientists identified as authors of this study, one would expect some pretty significant results. Yet, once again, it is seen that the models are not quite there yet, in terms of where one would logically hope they would be in accurately simulating the earth-atmosphere-ocean system in light of the tremendous amount of time, money, and effort that has been spent on their development and testing over the past several decades… Read More

Negative Effects of Salinity on Barley: Overcoming the Stress with CO2 (18 Jun 2013)
With the need to produce approximately twice the amount of food that is produced now to adequately feed the projected human population of the planet by mid-century, we are going to need all the help we can get; and the boost in barley productivity (as well as that of many other crop plants) provided by mankind’s CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere will be crucial if we are to be successful in this endeavor, especially so in agricultural regions subjected to high levels of soil salinity… Read More

Effects of Aquatic Acidification on a Widespread Toxic Haptophyte (19 Jun 2013)
As long as the air’s CO2 content continues to rise, we can expect some degree of pH reduction to occur, which should make it more difficult for (1) blooms of P. parvum to occur, and for (2) algal-produced toxins to be released to the surrounding water… Read More

Seven Centuries of Avalanche Activity in the Southern French Alps (19 Jun 2013)
Do they provide any evidence of increasing frequency or severity in response to global warming? No. Between AD 1338 and 2010, 38 destructive snow avalanches occurred, but “no significant temporal trend was detected concerning the frequency of these extreme events”… Read More

The Effects of Elevated CO2 on Tree Intrinsic Water Use Efficiency (19 Jun 2013)
Battipaglia et al. say their findings provide “a robust means of predicting water-use efficiency responses from a variety of tree species exposed to variable environmental conditions over time, and species-specific relationships that can help modeling elevated CO2 and climate impacts on forest productivity, carbon and water balances.” And their results clearly indicate that the CO2-induced increases in forest WUEi they documented are huge… Read More