Pierre Friedlingstein

New Capabilities

Director of Exeter's Global Carbon Budget Office

For decades, scientists assumed that forests and soils were absorbing roughly 30% of humanity's carbon dioxide emissions. A major reassessment published in Nature in January 2026 shows they've been overestimating: the natural land carbon sink is actually 20% smaller than previously calculated—0.6 billion tonnes of carbon per year that scientists thought was being absorbed is staying in the atmosphere.

Updated Feb 10