Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge

Le résumé fourni par la source

Meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature goals requires limiting future carbon emissions, yet current policies make temporarily overshooting the 1.5°C target likely. The potential climate feedback from destabilizing peatlands, storing large amounts of carbon, remains poorly quantified. Using the reduced-complexity Earth System Model OSCAR with an integrated peat carbon module, we found that across various overshoot pathways that temporarily exceed 1.5°C–2.5°C, northern peatlands exhibit net positive feedback, amplifying the overshoot challenge. Warming increases peatlands' net carbon uptake, but this is largely offset by higher methane emissions. We estimated that for each 1°C increase in peak warming, the positive feedback from peatlands decreases the remaining carbon budget by 37 GtCO 2 (22–48 GtCO 2 ). If the 1.5°C temperature target is exceeded, peatlands would increase carbon removal requirement by about 40 GtCO 2 (16–60 GtCO 2 ) (8.6%). Our findings highlight the importance of properly accounting for northern peatlands for estimating climate feedbacks, especially under overshoot scenarios.

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