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Forests in the EU are less effective at storing carbon. Researchers recommend specific steps in forest management and research to halt this negative trend.
The BIOMASS satellite was successfully launched into orbit on 29 April 2025. The BIOMASS mission is designed to map and monitor global forests. It will map the structure of different forest types and provide data on above-ground biomass.
Thanks to FLUXCOM-X, the next generation of data driven, AI-based earth system models, scientists can now see the Earth’s metabolism at unprecedented detail – assessed everywhere on land and every hour of the day.
Extreme climate events endanger groundwater quality and stability, when rain water evades natural purification processes in the soil. This was demonstrated in long-term groundwater analyses using new analytical methods.
Extreme precipitation should increase with warmer temperatures. Data from tropical regions show that this correlation is obscured by the cooling effect of clouds. When cloud effects are corrected, the increase in extreme precipitation with rising temperatures becomes apparent.
More frequent strong storms are destroying ever larger areas of the Amazon rainforest. Storm damage was mapped between 1985 and 2020. The total area of affected forests roughly quadrupled in the period studied.
In the annual ranking of the world's most cited and thus most influential scientists, five authors from our institute are once again represented in 2024.
The Global Carbon Project shows that fossil CO2 emissions will continue to rise in 2024. There is no sign of the rapid and substantial decline in emissions that would be needed to limit the impact of climate change
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina will hold a joint conference on the challenges of achieving carbon neutrality in Berlin on October 29-30, 2024.