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No support for carbon storage of >1,000 GtC in northern peatlands

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 465–467 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 28 June 2021

The Original Article was published on 21 October 2019

arising from J. E. Nichols and D. M. Peteet Nature Geoscience https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0454-z (2019)

Northern peatlands store large amounts of carbon: 500 ± 100 GtC, according to a consolidated estimate from a diversity of methods1,2,3,4,5,6. However, Nichols and Peteet7 presented an estimate of 1,055 GtC, exceeding previous estimates of carbon stock in global peatlands2 and in northern peatlands by a factor of two. Here we argue that this is an overestimate, caused by systematic bias introduced by their inclusion of 14C dates from mineral deposits and other unsuitable sites, the use of records that lack direct measurements of carbon density, and the methodology issues. Furthermore, their estimate is difficult to reconcile within the top-down constraints imposed by ice-core and marine records, and estimated contributions from other processes that affected the terrestrial carbon storage during the Holocene epoch.

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Fig. 1: Unrealistic consequences of large peat carbon storage.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Geographical Processes and Ecological Security in Changbai Mountains, School of Geographical Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

    Zicheng Yu

  2. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Zicheng Yu

  3. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Fortunat Joos, Hubertus Fischer & Jochen Schmitt

  4. British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK

    Thomas K. Bauska

  5. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Benjamin D. Stocker

  6. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Benjamin D. Stocker

  7. Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Julie Loisel

  8. Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

    Victor Brovkin & Thomas Kleinen

  9. Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gustaf Hugelius

  10. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Christoph Nehrbass-Ahles

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  1. Zicheng Yu
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Contributions

Z.Y. and F.J. designed the research, T.K.B. carried out the box-model simulation and created the figure, and all authors were involved in writing and revising the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zicheng Yu.

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Yu, Z., Joos, F., Bauska, T.K. et al. No support for carbon storage of >1,000 GtC in northern peatlands. Nat. Geosci. 14, 465–467 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00769-2

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