{"id":236,"date":"2006-01-11T17:56:47","date_gmt":"2006-01-11T21:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=236"},"modified":"2006-02-21T09:50:52","modified_gmt":"2006-02-21T13:50:52","slug":"scientists-baffled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/01\/scientists-baffled\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists baffled! Une surprise pour les scientifiques !<\/lang_fr>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Every so often a scientific paper comes out that truly surprises. The results of Keppler et al<\/a> in Nature this week is clearly one of those. They showed that a heretofore unrecognised process causes living plant material to emit methane (CH4<\/sub>, the second most important trace greenhouse gas), in quantities that appear to be very significant globally. This is surprising in two ways – firstly, CH4<\/sub> emission is normally associated with anaerobic (oxygen-limited) environments (like swamps or landfills) but chemistry in plants is generally thought of as ‘aerobic’ i.e. not oxygen-limited, and secondly, because although the total budget for methane has some significant uncertainty associated with it (see the IPCC assessment here<\/a>), the initial estimates of this effect (between 62\u2013236 Tg\/yr out of a total source of 500+ Tg\/yr!) give numbers that might be difficult to incorporate without some significant re-evaluations elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Reactions so far have been guarded<\/a>, and there will undoubtedly be a scramble to check and refine the estimates of this process’s importance. Once the dust settles though, the situation may not be so different to before – some emissions may turn out to have been mis-identified, this source may not be as large as these initial estimates (10-30% of total sources) suggest, or it might radically challenge our current understanding of methane’s sources and sinks. However, the process by which this is decided will demonstrate clearly that the scientific method is alive and well in the climate sciences. That is, as long as a work is careful and the conclusions sound, papers that upset the apple cart can appear in the major journals and have a good chance of ending up being accepted by the rest of the field (providing the conclusions hold up of course!). <\/p>\n

Update 19 Jan:<\/strong> The authors of the study have released a clarification<\/a> of their study to counter some of the misleading conclusions that had appeared in the press.<\/p>\n

De temps en temps, un papier scientifique cr\u00e9e de v\u00e9ritables surprises. Les r\u00e9sultats de Keppler et al.<\/a> publi\u00e9s cette semaine dans la revue Nature est clairement un de ceux-\u00e7i. Ces auteurs ont prouv\u00e9 qu’un processus jusqu’ici non reconnu fait que les plantes vivantes \u00e9mettent du m\u00e9thane (CH4<\/sub>, le deuxi\u00e8me gaz \u00e0 effet de serre apr\u00e8s le CO2<\/sub>), dans des quantit\u00e9s qui semblent \u00eatre tr\u00e8s significatives globalement. Ceci \u00e9tonne de deux mani\u00e8res – premi\u00e8rement, l’\u00e9mission de CH4<\/sub>est normalement associ\u00e9e aux environnements ana\u00e9robies (c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire pauvres en oxyg\u00e8ne) comme les marais ou d\u00e9charges, alors que la chimie dans les plantes est g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement consid\u00e9r\u00e9e comme \u00e9tant ‘a\u00e9robie ‘ c.-\u00e0-d. non limit\u00e9e en oxyg\u00e8ne, et deuxi\u00e8mement, parce que les \u00e9valuations initiales de cet effet (entre 62-236 Tg\/an sur une source totale de 500+ Tg\/an!) donne des valeurs qu\u2019il sera difficile d\u2019incorporer dans le budget total du m\u00e9thane sans des r\u00e9-\u00e9valuations majeures (et ce malgr\u00e9 les incertitudes li\u00e9es au budget total \u2013 voir l\u2019\u00e9valuation de celui-ci par le GIEC<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Les r\u00e9actions jusqu’ici ont \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9serv\u00e9es<\/a>, et il y aura assur\u00e9ment un grand nombre d\u2019\u00e9tudes pour v\u00e9rifier et raffiner les \u00e9valuations de l’importance de ce processus. Une fois que la poussi\u00e8re se sera red\u00e9pos\u00e9, la situation pourrait ne pas \u00eatre si diff\u00e9rente que celle pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent cette \u00e9tude \u2013 certaines \u00e9missions pouvant s’av\u00e9rer avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 mal interpr\u00e9t\u00e9es, cette source pouvant ne pas \u00eatre aussi importante que sugg\u00e9r\u00e9e par ces \u00e9valuations initiales (10-30% de sources totales), ou au contraire elle pourrait radicalement d\u00e9fier notre compr\u00e9hension actuelle des sources et puits du m\u00e9thane. Cependant, le processus par lequel cette \u00e9tude sera confirm\u00e9e ou pas d\u00e9montrera clairement que la m\u00e9thode scientifique est belle-et-bien vivante dans les sciences de climat. C’est-\u00e0-dire, aussi longtemps qu’un travail est soign\u00e9 et rigoureux, et que les conclusions sont justifi\u00e9es, les papiers bousculant le courant de pens\u00e9e dominant peuvent para\u00eetre dans les journaux les plus importants, et ont une bonne chance \u00e0 la fin d’\u00eatre accept\u00e9 par le reste des scientifiques (si les conclusions tiennent la route bien s\u00fbr !).<\/lang_fr><\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often a scientific paper comes out that truly surprises. The results of Keppler et al in Nature this week is clearly one of those. They showed that a heretofore unrecognised process causes living plant material to emit methane (CH4, the second most important trace greenhouse gas), in quantities that appear to be very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-climate-science","7":"category-greenhouse-gases","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}