CLIMATE NEWS
Zombie Carbon Emissions Haunt the Planet
Decomposing trees release a huge volume of lagging CO2, killing species and hobbling efforts to fight global warming.
Deforestation in the Amazon region dropped by 30 percent from 2005 to 2010, sparing trees that soak up carbon dioxide. A big win in the fight against climate change, right?
Maybe not big enough to save the planet, or the species on it.
After trees are cut down, they gradually decay, releasing carbon, degrading the habitat, and threatening species long after the cutting stops. These lagging emissions have an important impact on the battle against global warming, a study released today in the journal Current Biology finds. Even with the 30 percent reduction in Amazon deforestation, there was only a 10 percent decrease in carbon emissions, the researchers found.
And even if tropical deforestation had ended altogether in 2010, there would still be 8.6 petagrams (10 to the 12th kilograms) of emissions released into the atmosphere as trees decomposed, the equivalent of five to 10 years of global deforestation. That's roughly the annual amount of total global emissions, said Abigail Swann, a University of Washington professor who studies climate change and who wasn't involved in the study.
Drought under global warming
Because the subtropical regions support conditions conducive for arid climates, deserts will march northward into more densely-inhabited regions. Under continued fossil-fuel burning, the Sahara Desert leaps across the Mediterranean and fully expands into southern and central Europe.
A spate of real-time clocks – watch the numbers
Global temperature 1.0112C degrees
World population 7,445,300,000
Carbon 403.4ppm
C02 emissions 19,525,000,000 tonnes
US Debt $19,420,000,000,000
Deforestation 7,934,000 hectares
93.4% of global warming goes into oceans.
