Old wine holds the key to past CO2 levels
Articles — By forcechange on December 2, 2008 11:34 am
Researchers studying climate change in Europe have found an interesting way to measure historic CO2 levels throughout the region– wine. It turns out that the carbon atoms in the alcohol can be traced directly back to the carbon atom in the CO2 that was consumed by the original grape vines. As a result, researchers are able to analyze the carbon in the alcohol to find out what percentage of CO2 was in the atmosphere when the grapes were ripening.
The wine bottles themselves are also a great resource, as they provide researchers with the location and year that the wine was produced. Unlike drilling ice cores in order to measure historic CO2 levels, this process allows researchers to look at specific locations where there is no perma-ice. Of course, it is also restricted by the years that wine was produced that still exists today– which is a relatively small sliver in time.
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We (the researchers mentioned in this article) did not analyze the CO2 from the atmosphere in wine. We have analyzed the isotope carbon-14 in the ethanol of the wines, which has the same value as the carbon-14 in the atmosphere where the winegrapes grew. We have compared these carbon-14 levels with the carbon-14 level of a region in Europe with relatively low fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Since carbon-14 in the atmosphere is diluted when fossil fuel CO2 is emitted (because it contains only the carbon isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-13; the carbon-14 has decayed completely after millions of years), a lower carbon-14 level in a certain (wine) region in comparison to a relatively ‘clean’ region gives a signature of fossil fuel CO2 emissions in a region. The goal of our research was to investigate the use of wine ethanol to supplement the carbon-14 measurements of air samples. And we want to determine trends in regional fossil fuel emissions in the last 30 years.
Sanne, thank you for the great explanation of your work and correction!