Inside Climate News discusses When Autumn Leaves Begin to Fall: As the Climate Warms, Leaves on Some Trees are Dying Earlier. The finding counters scientists’ previous assumptions and indicates a reduction in the amount of carbon deciduous forests can remove from the atmosphere.
When the last shimmering autumn leaves drift to the ground, it doesn’t just mark a seasonal change. It’s also a turning point in the global carbon cycle, as forests and other plants start to emit carbon dioxide instead of soaking it up.
New research shows that, as the planet warms, deciduous trees in temperate European forests are losing their leaves earlier, and that could reduce the amount of CO2 forests will remove from the atmosphere in the decades ahead.
“Against previous expectations, leaves are likely to fall earlier in the autumn,” said Constantin Zohner, a climate biologist with the Crowther Lab at ETH Zürich who was a co-author of the new study on leaf senescence, published in the journal Science on Thursday.