Fire weakens land carbon sinks before 1.5 °C

Burton, Chantelle A.; Kelley, Douglas I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1413-4969; Burke, Eleanor; Mathison, Camilla; Jones, Chris D.; Betts, Richard A.; Robertson, Eddy; Teixeira, João C.M.; Cardoso, Manoel; Anderson, Liana O.. 2024 Fire weakens land carbon sinks before 1.5 °C. Nature Geoscience. 10, pp. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01554-7

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Abstract/Summary

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the Paris Agreement committed countries to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 °C by urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the Paris temperature ambitions and remaining carbon budgets mostly use models that lack feedback among fire, vegetation and carbon, which are essential for understanding the future resilience of ecosystems. Here we use a coupled fire–vegetation model to explore regional impacts and feedbacks across global warming levels. We address whether the 1.5 °C goal is consistent with avoiding significant ecosystem changes when considering shifts in fire regimes. We find that the global warming level at which fire began to impact global carbon storage significantly was 1.07 °C (0.8–1.34 °C) above pre-industrial levels and conclude that fire is already playing a major role in decreasing the effectiveness of land carbon sinks. We estimate that considering fire reduces the remaining carbon budget by 25 Gt CO2 (~5%) for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 °C and 64 GtCO2 (~5%) for 2.0 °C compared to previous estimates. Whereas limiting warming to 1.5 °C is still essential for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, in many cases, we are already reaching the point of significant change in ecosystems rich in carbon and biodiversity.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01554-7
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Hydro-climate Risks (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	1752-0894
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.
Additional Keywords:	carbon cycle, environmental impact
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Related URLs:	Other Dataset
Date made live:	08 Oct 2024 09:55 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/538180

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