Plants can no longer cope: the situation with carbon dioxide on Earth is spiraling out of control.

The situation regarding climate change is gradually spiraling out of control. Scientists are once again highlighting that nature can no longer cope on its own with the volumes of greenhouse gases produced as a result of human activities.

The relevant study is still under review, but it can be found in the preprint database arXiv. The authors point out that in 2023, the level of carbon dioxide concentration reached record highs.

Although compared to 2022, carbon dioxide emissions increased by only 0.6%, at the Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii), its concentration has risen 86 times. These are record levels since 1958, when observations began.

Scientists believe that this increase is linked to the diminishing capacity of nature to absorb CO2. Among the possible causes, they highlight a range of factors:

• extreme weather events and ecosystem degradation worldwide;
• droughts in the Amazon;
• large-scale wildfires in Canada;
• the development of the El Niño Southern Oscillation phase, characterized by the displacement of warm waters in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean.

The authors of the study note that existing climate models do not account for the collapse of carbon sinks, which may explain why global warming is occurring faster than expected.

However, they mention that if the cause of the spike in carbon dioxide is related to drought and wildfires, then the end of the El Niño phase and the return of La Niña could bring rains back to critically important regions of the planet and resolve both issues.

Nevertheless, the damage inflicted may have long-term consequences. For instance, the burned forests in Canada will take about a hundred years to restore all lost biomass.

For context: carbon emissions into the atmosphere can occur due to several natural reasons such as volcanic activity, decomposition of biomass, respiration of plants and animals, as well as the release of carbon from the oceans due to warming. However, humanity has also contributed by burning fossil fuels and producing certain materials like cement and steel.

Plants and a variety of other organisms absorb atmospheric carbon, converting it into organic sugars through a process called photosynthesis. However, as scientists pointed out in this study, there are limits to this capability.

Humanity has yet to find a way to extract atmospheric carbon through technological means, and thus is forced to rely on natural processes. Until a solution is found, we will have to cope with annual temperature increases, climate chaos, rising sea levels, declining agricultural efficiency, and many other issues.

It is worth noting that scientists discovered last year that photosynthesis has another limitation—it cannot occur if air temperatures exceed 46.7 degrees Celsius. This means that "the lungs" of our planet could potentially cease functioning at any moment.