News Climate

Desert dig uncovers caches of missing CO2

Surprising arid “carbon sinks” keep massive amounts of climate-altering gas out of the atmosphere

China’s Taklamakan Desert

COVERT CARBON  Desert aquifers, fed by rain, surface and irrigation waters, hoard hundreds of billions of metric tons of carbon pulled from the atmosphere, new research suggests. The irrigation water flushes the carbon deep underground, report researchers who studied China’s Taklamakan Desert (shown).

Yan Li

By Thomas Sumner

- More than 2 years ago

The wet undersides of deserts may stash as much as a trillion metric tons of climate-altering carbon, more than stored in all land-based plants, new research suggests.