Tired forests release carbon

T.. startling and counterintuitive finding by Australian researchers, that the meagre tropical rainforests in the dry continent are turning into net emitters of carbon rather than acting asa sink, is a warning sign for all countries.

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What the scientists at Western Sydney University have found is that trees in the exhausted forests are dying at a higher rate due to heat, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere, and more aggressive cyclones are felling trees at an unsustainable rate; regeneration efforts are simply unable to keep up. The research findings published in Nature underscore several home truths in the fight to stop dangerous climate change, the most important of which is to cut the rate at which globe-warming gases are emitted by major economies. Forests are simply not able to withstand the rising heat. Capping the warming is crucial, therefore, to give the world a chance to stabilise its efforts to mitigate climate change and vigorously pursue initiatives that capture the existing stock of atmospheric CO2,