Summary
This large-scale analysis of 590 permanent tropical forest plots reveals maximum temperature as the dominant climate control on forest carbon storage, with an equilibrium sensitivity of −9.1 Mg C/ha per °C that increases in magnitude in already-hot forests. Despite this strong relationship, the findings suggest greater long-term thermal resilience in tropical forests than short-term climate perturbations would predict, indicating that forest carbon responses to warming may stabilize at new equilibrium states rather than continuing to decline indefinitely.
Regional applicability
This is a global tropical analysis without United Kingdom study sites. The findings are directly applicable to tropical forest policy and climate modelling but have limited transferability to temperate UK forestry systems, which operate under fundamentally different climate constraints and forest dynamics.
Key measures
Aboveground biomass (megagrams of carbon per hectare), maximum temperature, woody productivity, thermal sensitivity across tropical forest plots
Outcomes reported
The study quantified the equilibrium relationship between maximum temperature and aboveground forest carbon across 590 tropical forest plots, finding that maximum temperature is the strongest climate predictor of aboveground biomass with a loss of 9.1 Mg C/ha per °C, primarily through reduced woody productivity.
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