Global warming will cause peatlands to absorb more carbon – but the effect will weaken as warming increases, new research suggests.
Global warming will cause peatlands to absorb more carbon – but the effect will weaken as warming increases, new research suggests.
This effect – a so-called “negative feedback” where climate change causes effects which slow further climate change – will increase over the coming decades but will decline after 2100 if warming continues, according to an international team of 70 scientists, led by the University of Exeter.
Peatlands are a vital “carbon sink”, currently storing more carbon than all the world’s vegetation, and the research showed they will store even more carbon in the future than was previously believed.
In environments such as forests, carbon from dead plants decomposes and is released back into the atmosphere. But in peatlands, water slows this process and locks in carbon.
Read more at University of Exeter
Image: Peatland in Scotland. (Credit: Alex Whittle)
