Global Warming

Breathing Pause

Trees “held their breath” during the recent seeming pause in global warming, when the oceans were storing most of the planet’s excess heat.

Forests are considered to be the “lungs of the planet” because of their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the excess carbon.

An international study found that from 1998 to 2012, when atmospheric temperatures appeared to stop rising as quickly as in the years before, the world’s forests continued to breathe in the greenhouse gas through photosynthesis. But the trees reduced the rate at which they released the gas back into the atmosphere.