Study finds trees stop wood growth earlier, limiting carbon storage
Turns out, trees might not be the climate heroes we thought.
A big study found that while trees keep doing photosynthesis for months, they often stop growing wood way earlier, meaning less carbon gets locked away long-term than scientists expected.
This challenges how we predict forests will help fight climate change.
Researchers: photosynthesis continues as growth halts
Researchers noticed that when it gets hot and dry, tree growth basically hits pause almost instantly, even though photosynthesis keeps going a bit.
As lead author Mukund Palat Rao put it, "The moment you have dry and hot conditions, growth activity stops pretty instantly, while photosynthesis seems to continue at a slightly decreased rate."
The catch: only the carbon stored in wood sticks around for decades and centuries.
So if climate change keeps ramping up droughts and heatwaves, forests might not be able to store as much carbon in the future as current models suggest.