Are rainforests now a cause of, rather than the answer to, climate change?

"Human activity has caused some rainforests to switch from being a solution for climate change, to a source of it, a new study has found. The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, discovered that Africa's forests and woody savannas, which historically acted as a carbon sink, removing atmospheric carbon and storing it as biomass made a critical transition from a carbon sink to a carbon source between 2010 and 2017."

"Currently, Africa's forests are responsible for about one-fifth of global carbon removal. The largest of the continent's forests is the Congo rainforest the second largest in the world after the Amazon, and often dubbed the lungs of Africa. The report found that between 2011 and 2017, Africa's forests lost 106 million tonnes in biomass living organisms such as plants each year. This means their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere has been severely reduced."

Africa's forests and woody savannas historically functioned as major carbon sinks but transitioned to net carbon sources between 2010 and 2017. Satellite data tracked declines in biomass and reductions in carbon uptake across forests and woody savannas. These ecosystems currently account for about one-fifth of global carbon removal yet lost an average of 106 million tonnes of biomass per year between 2011 and 2017. The largest of these forests, the Congo rainforest, has experienced significant biomass loss. Human activities and increasing pressures have driven the decline in carbon sequestration, worsening the global greenhouse gas emissions gap and complicating Paris Agreement climate targets.

Read at www.aljazeera.com