Recent research suggests that the ecosystem has already experienced a dreaded feedback effect which could mean that the tipping point has passed when climate destabilization becomes inevitable. (Burning of fossil fuels spews excessive carbon into the atmosphere which causes global warming which causes extreme weather which causes vegetation to absorb less carbon, thus more ends up in the atmosphere.)
The team then fed the various readings into complex computer models to calculate the global effect of extreme weather on the carbon balance. The models showed that the effect is indeed extreme: on average, vegetation absorbs 11 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide than it would in a climate that does not experience extremes. “It is therefore by no means negligible,” says Reichstein.
