In a recent study, it has been found that the cooling effect forests and trees have on the planet are a result of a much more complex process than just carbon sequestration. The tropical forests store one third of the world's carbon, but apart from that they are also large containers of moisture, they keep their surroundings cool, they create more clouds which apart from giving rain provide cover from Sun’s heat radiation.
Trees also release organic compounds — for example, pine-scented terpenes — that react with other chemicals in the atmosphere to sometimes create a net cooling effect. Considering the carbon capturing ability and other biophysical aspects of the forests, scientists estimate that tropical forests are keeping the earth cooler by about 1 degree celsius.
Image on the right shows the change in how much carbon a vegetated area stored or emitted between the years 2000 and 2019. Greener areas absorbed more carbon than they emitted, while more pink and purple regions released more carbon than they stored. One megagram of carbon (MgC) is one metric ton.
According to another study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the forests that have long been sinks of carbon are becoming less resilient to extreme weather events and hold less carbon then they used to in the past.
“The Amazon was considered a substantial carbon sink because of large tracts of pristine forest that soak up carbon dioxide, however, our results show that overall, the Amazon Basin is becoming almost neutral in terms of carbon balance because deforestation, degradation, and the impacts of warming, frequent droughts, and fires over the past two decades release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere” said Sassan Saatchi, principal scientist at JPL and the study lead investigator.
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