The Earth’s Carbon Sinks Are Collapsing
Climate change might be far worse than we thought.
Forests are the planet’s lungs, supplying us with oxygen and burying atmospheric carbon deep in their rich soils. Thousands of studies, articles, and documentaries confidently state that around 30% of humanity’s carbon emissions get absorbed by Earth’s mighty forests. In fact, some even claim these leafy carbon sinks will pull more carbon out of the air as we increase the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and, in turn, make trees more efficient. However, while some of this might have once been true, a new paper disputes these claims. As a result, climate change is a much slippier slope than we thought. This paper is a preliminary report first published by the Guardian. It found that in 2023, there was practically zero net carbon absorbed by land. This means that trees still absorbed carbon dioxide, but forests produced an equal amount of carbon dioxide, meaning that overall, no carbon was absorbed by the atmosphere.
Why did this happen? Well, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and as such, almost every significant land ecosystem was hit by unprecedented droughts and wildfires. Both of these events hinder the forest’s ability to bury carbon away and force enormous amounts of stored carbon dioxide to be released back into the atmosphere.
