Climate research breakthrough

A long standing puzzle that has haunted climate researchers looking at the fate of carbon stored in the world’s soils, has now been resolved. The research suggests that climate warming may be occurring even faster than previously recognised.
The international team of researchers, led by Bristol University and reporting in Nature [20 January 2005], show that an apparent biological adaptation of micro-organisms that break down carbon in soils, thereby releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, can in fact be explained by the widely contrasting properties of those organic carbons.