Study: more than a third of the Arctic has become a source of climate emissions

Climate change has warmed the Arctic so much that more than a third of it has become a source of carbon dioxide emissions. This is according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

When forest fires are taken into account, 40% of the area is a net source of emissions.

For the research, data was collected from 200 sites in Siberia, Alaska, Canada and the Nordic countries between 1990 and 2020. Research areas were in the tundra, forests and wetlands.

The researchers noted that warming also increased carbon-fixing vegetation in the Arctic, but this is not enough to reverse the emissions-increasing effect of warming.