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The critical question is whether soils release more CO2 because faster-growing plants pump more in, or if soils release CO2 that would have stayed in the ground at lower temperatures. If the latter, the fresh influx of CO2 could produce a self-reinforcing cycle, producing higher temperatures that cause even more CO2 to be released. “That’s the $50,000 question: Is there a feedback effect?” said Ben Bond-Lamberty, a University of Maryland, College Park biogeochemist and co-author of the review, in the March 24 Nature. “The data we have implies a feedback. It doesn’t prove it, but it’s consistent with the possibility.” Carbon dioxide enters the soil through the roots of living plants and from the decaying bodies of dead plants, and is processed by microbes, fungi and insects. Over time, some of that CO2 releases back into the atmosphere. At any given time, there’s about twice as much CO2 in Earth’s soils as in its atmosphere.

One of the blokes from Top Gear was tooling around Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull in a Toyota pickup about a week before it blew and scientists who set up monitoring equipment just hours before the eruption used the same truck.

Most airports in northern Europe remained closed early today as ash from a volcanic eruption on Iceland continued to wreak havoc on air travel. Some European airlines made test flights over the weekend to assess the situation, and the industry wants the skies reopened.