Zhu, B. orcid.org/0000-0001-9360-6797, Qiu, C., Gasser, T. et al. (26 more authors) (2025) Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge. One Earth. 101353. ISSN 2590-3330
Abstract
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 GtCO2 (22–48 GtCO2). If the 1.5°C temperature target is exceeded, peatlands would increase carbon removal requirement by about 40 GtCO2 (16–60 GtCO2) (8.6%). Our findings highlight the importance of properly accounting for northern peatlands for estimating climate feedbacks, especially under overshoot scenarios.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC 4.0). |
Keywords: | northern peatlands, carbon, greenhouse gases, temperature feedback, overshoot, climate change, land surface model, reduced-complexity earth system model |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jul 2025 13:22 |
Last Modified: | 07 Jul 2025 13:22 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Cell Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101353 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:228714 |