Projecting how the planet will react to environmental change as the atmosphere warms is no straightforward matter.
In a new study, scientists detail the reaction of intact tropical forests, which host a vital 40 percent of carbon stored in vegetation, to climate variability in an effort to understand exactly how sensitive they are to temperature change over time.
The research, published in Science, indicates that tropical forests can retain their capacity to store high levels of carbon under high temperatures, demonstrating that they can sustain temperatures up to an estimated threshold of 32 degrees Celsius in daytime temperature.
Yet this positive finding is only possible if forests have time to adapt, they remain intact, and if global greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed to avoid pushing global temperatures into the danger zone beyond the critical threshold, said the report, which involved an international team of 225 scientists measuring and monitoring more than half a million trees in more than 800 tropical forests.