Warming Soils Could Trigger Potentially Unstoppable Climate Feedback Loop: Study

Researchers behind the 26-year, ongoing experiment buried cables in a set plots in a Massachusetts forest and warmed the soil to 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) above the ambient temperature to see how their carbon emissions varied with control plots. They four phases of alternating soil carbon loss and carbon stability. Newsweekexplains that "the team believes that during the peak periods, microbes [in the soil] are using up a plentiful supply of food. But when that runs out, the community has to find a new source of food, leading to the lulls in carbon release."