Tropical Forests May Stop Absorbing CO₂ During El Niño Events
Tropical forests are vital carbon sinks, but research shows El Niño events can cause South American forests to stop absorbing CO₂ entirely.
Tropical forests draw down and store large quantities of CO₂ from the atmosphere. The Amazon rainforest in South America, for example, stores approximately 123 billion tonnes of carbon — more than is stored in any other terrestrial ecosystem in the world. But these forests are facing a critical challenge.
Research from 2023, carried out by more than 100 colleagues, found that tropical forests in South America are vulnerable to climate extremes. During an El Niño event — the warm phase of a natural fluctuation in Earth’s climate system — South American tropical forests may fail to act as a carbon sink altogether.