Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge.
Year: 2025
Type: article
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.
DOI: 10.48620/90780
Authors: Zhu, Biqing, Qiu, Chunjing, Gasser, Thomas, Ciais, Philippe, Lamboll, Robin D, Ballantyne, Ashley, Chang, Jinfeng, Chaudhary, Nitin, Gallego-Sala, Angela V, Guenet, Bertrand, Holden, Joseph, Joos, Fortunat, Kleinen, Thomas, Kwon, Min Jung, Melnikova, Irina, Müller, Jurek, Page, Susan, Salmon, Elodie, Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich, Schurgers, Guy, Shrivastav, Gaurav P, Shurpali, Narasinha J, Tanaka, Katsumasa, Wårlind, David, Westermann, Sebastian, Xi, Yi, Zhang, Wenxin, Zhang, Yuan, Zhu, Dan
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDGs: Climate action, Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7076433651
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