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Forests Absorb 20 Percent of Fossil Fuel Emissions

Study Author Michael Kahn

Tropical trees have grown bigger over the past 40 years and now absorb 20 percent of fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere, highlighting the need to preserve threatened forests, British researchers said Wednesday.

Using data collected from nearly 250,000 trees in the world’s tropical forests over the past 40 years, their study found that tropical forests across the world remove 4.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

“To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a ton of carbon, should be valued at around 13 billion pounds per year,”said Lee White, Gabon’s chief climate change scientist, who co-led the study, said in a statement.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that human activity produces 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide worldwide each year, but only about 15 billion tons actually stays in the atmosphere and affects climate change.

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Posted in Studies. Tagged with , .

By Corinna Byrne
February 20, 2009

1 comment

One Response

  1. Corinna Byrne said
    on March 20, 2009

    Climate change transforming rainforests into ‘major carbon emitters’ Although carbon dioxide encourages growth, trees die younger, claims researcher.
    Source: Copyright 2009, Guardian March 11, 2009, Oliver Tickell.

    “Most carbon is in living trees, and tree mortality is not included in the models,” said David Hilbert of research organisation CSIRO at the Climate Congress in Copenhagen. “Trees grow faster with higher temperatures, but mortality goes up too. So despite higher tree growth and higher turnover of biomass, rainforests in a warmer climate have a reduced carbon storage capacity.”
    Full article: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=121028

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