Peatlands are water-logged environments that can hold huge stores of soil carbon. The continent is also home to around 3% of the world’s peatlands, including the world’s most extensive tropical peatland. This is because trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and then use it to grow new leaves, shoots and roots. Tropical forests are capable of storing large amounts of CO2. Tropical turmoilĪfrica is home to one third of the world’s tropical rainforests. Other causes of CO2 emissions could include “substantial land-use change”, including deforestation and fires associated with agriculture, the study says. In the African tropics, it can cause unusually high temperatures and drought. El Niño is a natural phenomenon that periodically affects weather in many parts of the world. The high rate of CO2 loss in 2016 could be associated with a “strong” El Niño, scientists tell Carbon Brief. This is because the land surface is covered by tropical forests and peatlands, environments which typically absorb large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. The region’s 2016 emissions were “unexpectedly large”, the authors write in Nature Communications. This means that, if Africa’s tropical regions were a country, it would be the second largest emitter of CO2 in the world – ahead of the US, which currently emits 5.3bn tonnes of CO2 a year. Africa’s tropical land released close to 6bn tonnes of CO2 in 2016, according to data taken by satellites.
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