A study by government and university scientists indicates that the land mass in North America is absorbing a large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that is closely associated with global warming.
The study was funded by NOAA's Office of Global Programs. According to the Science article, the researchers developed a three- dimensional grid of the earth to model the flow of carbon dioxide. The expectation was that carbon dioxide would increase over North America as the winds moved from west to east, due to the large amounts of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel burning. Instead, carbon dioxide tended to decline slightly in crossing North America from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans during the period of the study. The researchers are not sure what is causing this decline of carbon dioxide.