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Tropical forests store a quarter-century worth of fossil fuel emissions in their trees alone, but will this still be the case with increasing temperatures under climate change? A new study investigating the resilience of tropical forests indicates that these forests will continue to store high levels of carbon under high temperatures, but there is a limit.

published in the journal Science is co-authored by Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� PhD candidate Joeri Zwerts. It shows that in the long run tropical forests can handle heat up to an estimated threshold of 32°C during the daytime. This threshold highlights the critical importance of urgently cutting our emissions to avoid pushing too many forests beyond the safety zone.

Possible under certain conditions

However, this positive finding is only possible if forests have time to adapt, remain intact, and if global heating is strictly limited to avoid pushing global temperatures into conditions beyond the critical threshold. 

In this global effort to study tropical forest dynamics, Joeri Zwerts has been responsible for the management and re-measurements of various forest plots. 

"Gathering data in remote areas of tropical forests is no easy walk in the woods,” he explains. “Sometimes we had to travel for days and stay in the forests for multiple weeks to reach and measure the forest plots that formed part of the data of this study." 

Further reading

Sullivan, M. J., Lewis, S. L., Affum-Baffoe, K., Castilho, C., Costa, F., Sanchez, A. C., ... & Qie, L. (2020). . Science, 368(6493), 869-874.