Australian tropical rainforest trees switch in world first from carbon sink to emissions source

Nearly 50 years of data collected from tropical forests across Queensland has revealed the environment’s crucial carbon sink could be under threat. Photograph: Ben Blanche/AMCS

Australian tropical rainforest trees have become the first in the world to switch from being a carbon sink to an emissions source due to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions.

The change, which applies to the trees’ trunks and branches but not the roots system, began about 25 years ago, according to new research published in Nature.