You probably recall our exchange about this 2023 land carbon paper a few months ago. IMO better to frame this paper’s result as “in 2023 the net land carbon sink was abnormally low due to record wildfires and drought in an El Niño year” rather than “the land sink has collapsed.” 1/
The long term trend has been an increase, not decrease, in the land carbon sink to absorbing ~10 Gt CO2e/yr of emissions, largely due to the effects of climate change itself. If that were to go away it would be really bad! But important to consider short term observations and long term trends. 2/2
The terrestrial biosphere stores carbon in a land carbon sink, offsetting emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. This Review demonstrates that the magnitude of the land carbon sink has increased ove...