The world's forests, plants and soil absorbed almost no carbon last year, according to preliminary research from a group of international scientists.
The three are considered land carbon sinks because they have the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for their natural processes. But a rapidly warming climate may be prohibiting the land carbon sinks from performing effectively.
Carbon sinks are sites that "naturally remove potentially atmosphere-damaging carbon dioxide from the atmosphere", and include forests and oceans, said Futurism. Land carbon sinks exist because "forests and other land ecosystems take up slightly more CO2 as they grow than they release when plants die and decompose or burn each year", said New Scientist.
From 2010 to 2022 the collective of land carbon sinks removed, on average, two gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. But last year many of the sinks collapsed, removing only approximately 0.23 to 0.65 gigatons of carbon, the "lowest amount since 2003 and more than three times lower than the average over the past decade," added New Scientist.
Many climate models have failed to consider carbon sink collapses in emissions projections. "If this collapse were to happen again in the next few years, we risk seeing a rapid increase in CO2 and climate change beyond what the models predict," Philippe Ciais, one of the study's authors, told Le Monde.
This could mean that dire climate consequences may occur sooner than previously thought. "Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end," said Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
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