Concerns that global warming may have a domino effect -unleashing 600 billion tons of carbon in vast expanses of peat in the Northern hemisphere and accelerating warming to disastrous proportions - may be less justified than previously thought.

That's the conclusion of a new study on the topic in ACS' journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Christian Blodau and colleagues explain that peat bogs - wet deposits of partially decayed plants that are the source of gardeners' peat moss and fuel - hold about one-third of the world's carbon.

Scientists have been concerned that global warming might dry out the surface of peatlands, allowing the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and methane (a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide) produced from decaying organic matter.

To see whether this catastrophic domino effect is a realistic possibility, the scientists conducted laboratory simulations studying the decomposition of wet bog peat for nearly two years.

Far from observing sudden releases of greenhouse gases, they found that carbon release and methane production slowed down considerably in deeply buried wet peat, most likely because deeper peat is shielded from exchange of water and gases with the atmosphere.

In connection with previous work, the study concluded that "even under moderately changing climatic conditions," peatlands will continue to sequester, or isolate from the atmosphere, their huge deposits of carbon and methane.