News Climate

A new map shows where carbon needs to stay in nature to avoid climate disaster

Releasing the carbon stored in vulnerable ecosystems could push global warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius

image of a forest looking up at the canopy

Old-growth forests, like this stand of redwood trees in California, store a lot of climate-warming carbon that would be lost to the atmosphere if the trees were cut down. The temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest contain 5 gigatons of such carbon, according to a new study.

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By Jonathan Lambert

- More than 2 years ago

Over decades, centuries and millennia, the steady skyward climb of redwoods, the tangled march of mangroves along tropical coasts and the slow submersion of carbon-rich soil in peatlands has locked away billions of tons of carbon.