Droughts increasingly reduce CO2 uptake in the tropics

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Researchers have found that droughts and land water variability have had increasing effect on the carbon cycle in the tropics over the last sixty years. Most climate models fail to capture this observation. This could mean that terrestrial ecosystems could absorb less CO₂ than expected in their role as carbon sinks in the future. Plants take in CO₂ to grow. They extract it from the atmosphere and use it to build organic compounds by means of photosynthesis and water. Terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed an average of about 32 percent of CO₂ emissions caused by human activity over the last six decades. Whether and to what extent terrestrial vegetation can continue to function as a carbon sink in a changing climate is a key question in climate science and is of vital political relevance.