Many Overheated Forests May Soon Release More Carbon Than They Absorb
New research suggests that, sooner than expected, trees may become carbon sources rather than carbon sinks, as a feedback loop of rising temperatures drives them to release more greenhouse gases.
By Bob Berwyn
January 13, 2021
As the climate in the Rocky Mountains warmed at about double the average global rate in recent decades, rapidly spreading bark beetle outbreaks left millions of trees red and dead, part of an intensifying cycle of global warming impacts that decreases the amount of carbon dioxide forests can take out of the atmosphere. Credit: Bob Berwyn
As the climate in the Rocky Mountains warmed at about double the average global rate in recent decades, rapidly spreading bark beetle outbreaks left millions of trees red and dead, part of an intensifying cycle of global warming impacts that decreases the amount of carbon dioxide forests can take out of the atmosphere. Credit: Bob Berwyn
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The last decades have been filled with dire warning signs from forests. Global warming has contributed to thinning canopies in European forests and to sudden die-offs of aspen trees in Colorado, as well as insect outbreaks that are killing trees around the world. In many places, forests are not growing back.
New research shows that Earth’s overheated climate will alter forests at a global scale even more fundamentally, by flipping a critical greenhouse gas switch in the next few decades. The study suggests that, by 2040, forests will take up only half as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they do now, if global temperatures keep rising at the present pace.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13012021/forests-heat-climate-change/
