WARNING ISSUED BY SCIENTISTS ON THE FUTURE OF EARTH AS ALMOST NO CO2 WAS ABSORBED BY TREES

After finding last year that land and trees absorbed nearly no carbon, a global team of researchers has warned about the planet's future.

One of the first things everyone learns in science class is that plants absorb carbon dioxide. But what happens if that isn't the case?

In what ways do land and plants typically absorb carbon?

Human activities like burning coal, oil, or natural gas produce carbon, which can become trapped in the atmosphere and cause climate change.

We are therefore continuously urged to lessen our carbon footprint, but the environment does assist us in this endeavour.

A large portion of the carbon in the atmosphere is absorbed by the earth's soils, grasslands, forests, and oceans, which helps to control the planet's climate.

Humans started to emit more as production, population, and technology advanced, but plants also started to absorb more because the increased carbon dioxide allowed them to grow more quickly.

In 2023, how much carbon did plants absorb?

For thousands of years, plants that live in a comparatively stable climate on Earth have been able to control the release of carbon.

However, the balance is shifting in the wrong direction as temperatures rise and agricultural labour continues to grow.

Researchers from China, the UK, France, and Germany noted in a collaborative paper that 2023 was the hottest year on record and that soil, plants, and forests absorbed nearly no carbon.

Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, warned of the alarming direction we are going in during New York Climate Week in September.

So far, nature has counterbalanced our mistreatment. "This is the end of it," he declared.

What caused plants to stop exerting carbon?

According to a study on carbon absorption published earlier this year, there were regional differences in the overall amount of carbon absorbed by forests between 1990 and 2019.

The collapse of the carbon sink last year is thought to have been influenced by hot conditions in the boreal forests, as well as drought in the Amazon and some parts of the tropics.

The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is very high in 2023, which translates into a very, very low absorption by the terrestrial biosphere, according to Philippe Ciais, a researcher at the French Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences and one of the paper's authors.

According to The Guardian, he went on, "We have seen a decline trend in absorption for eight years in the northern hemisphere, where you have more than half of CO2 uptake." "There is no solid evidence that it will recover."

Will the planet be able to bounce back?

Even though the 2023 preliminary numbers are alarming, if exposure to wildfires and droughts declines, the carbon sink may temporarily disintegrate.

Sea temperatures are rising as a result of the ocean's ability to absorb some carbon emissions.

"Overall, models agreed that both the land sink and the ocean sink are going to decrease in the future as a result of climate change," said Professor Andrew Watson, who leads Exeter University's marine and atmospheric science group. However, it is unclear how soon that will occur.

"The models tend to show this happening rather slowly over the next 100 years or so. This might happen a lot quicker.

“Climate scientists [are] worried about climate change not because of the things that are in the models but the knowledge that the models are missing certain things.”

With our natural carbon sinks in a precarious state, Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter University, warned that we 'shouldn’t rely on natural forests to do the job'.

"We really, really have to tackle the big issue: fossil fuel emissions across all sectors,” he said.