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Soil carbon

A leaky sink

Ambitious greenhouse–gas emissions cuts are needed to limit the global mean annual temperature increase to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels. A study now finds that the land sink for CO2 appears much smaller than is currently factored into climate models, suggesting that emissions cuts may need to be even more ambitious than currently estimated.

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Figure 1: Representation of two scenarios for how soil carbon stocks will respond to elevated CO2.

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Correspondence to Mark A. Bradford.

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Bradford, M. A leaky sink. Nature Clim Change 7, 475–476 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3332

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