Ralph Keeling, Professor of Geochemistry in the Geosciences Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Prof. Keeling is the 2018 Harvard EPS Visiting Scholar. 

A perspective from four decades of studying the land carbon sink. Are we entering a jungle world?

Roughly 25% of the excess CO2 from fossil-fuel burning is being absorbed by land plants, as part of a “land carbon sink”. Typically the concern is raised that this sink may eventually turn into a source driven by climate warming, releasing additional CO2 into the atmosphere and exacerbating climate warming. Here I emphasize another possibility: that the sink may stay strong for many centuries into the future, associated with major changes in plant ecology and the functioning of the land biosphere, including an extraordinary accumulation of biomass.

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