This article is translated and shared from IRD. It highlights the importance for all of us to keep protecting our forests and live in a more Eco-conscious way.
Will tropical forests, which store a quarter of a century of fossil fuel-related carbon emissions in their trees, save us for a long time? According to research conducted by a large international team, including scientists from UMR AMAP and EDB, these ecosystems can withstand climate change, but only to a certain extent. Beyond that, global warming would reduce carbon storage capacity by affecting tree growth or increasing mortality. This would in turn help accelerate global warming...
For these scientists, who have carried out more than two million measurements of tree diameters over several decades and in 24 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, tropical forests will continue to act as a carbon sink until their average daytime temperature exceeds 32oC. These results underline the urgency of containing greenhouse gas emissions, since by limiting the increase in global average temperatures to 2oC above pre-industrial levels, three quarters of tropical forests will still exceed this fateful threshold.
Wandering on the river