Surge in carbon levels shows vegetation struggling to cope

Climate change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming, research suggests.

Bristol University researchers say a previously unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity.

Such a shift would worsen the gloomy predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which warned last week that there is less than a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

At the moment about half of human carbon emissions are re-absorbed into the environment, but the fear among scientists is that increased temperatures will reduce this effect. Wolfgang Knorr, a climate researcher at Bristol, said: "We could be seeing the carbon cycle feedback kicking in, which is good news for scientists because it shows our models are correct. But it's bad news for everybody else."

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