Climate Change Study Warns Earth’s Ability To Remove Carbon Is Disappearing

A new study on the environment warned that climate change is directly preventing Earth’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Authors of the study warned that if this continues, the effects of climate change on the planet will accelerate significantly.

The study regarding the effects of climate change on Earth was conducted over a span of 30 years. During this period, the researchers monitored carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and how much of it was being recycled by the planet’s rainforests. The study was published in the journal Nature.

As noted by the researchers, tropical rainforests play a huge role in regulating global temperatures by absorbing the carbon dioxide in the air through a process known as sequestration. The rainforests that mainly contribute to this process, such as those in the Amazon and Africa, are often referred to as carbon sinks.

However, according to the new study, the ability of these rainforests to absorb and recycle carbon dioxide has been declining since the 1990s. The researchers were able to come up with this surprising finding after observing about 300,000 trees in over 560 undisturbed tropical forests for about three decades.

According to the study’s lead author Simon Lewis, a professor at the University of Leeds in the U.K., rainforests played a huge role in slowing down the rate of climate change on Earth. Unfortunately, with these carbon sinks on the brink of collapsing, negative environmental changes on the planet would accelerate at a faster rate.

“The world’s tropical forests are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and acting as a brake, slowing down the rate of climate change,” Lewis told Express. “In the 1990s, they were sequestering – removing – about 17 percent of all fossil fuel and land-use change emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

According to the researchers, carbon sequestrating peaked during the 1990s. However, it has been dropping since then. By 2010s, the researchers noticed a huge drop in the ability of forests to get rid of carbon dioxide.

As noted in the study, carbon sequestration dropped by 33% as many intact forests shrank by an average of 19%. With rainforests not being able to recycle as much carbon dioxide as they could previously, global carbon emissions spiked by about 46%.