A landmark study published in Environmental Research Letters reveals that natural carbon cycles are collapsing into self-reinforcing feedback loops. Driven by sustained fossil fuel combustion, thawing high-latitude permafrost, dry forest wildfires, and warming wetlands are emitting additional greenhouse gases in real time.
Scientists warn that these uncounted natural emissions could amplify post-2020 anthropogenic global heating by 20 to 30 percent, adding between 0.2°C and 0.4°C of warming this century.
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Lead author Dr Sam Abernethy, research scientist at Spark Climate Solutions, highlighted the systemic blind spot in current climate forecasting. “What surprised us was the size of the feedback: we found that natural systems could amplify global warming by 20 to 30 percent,” Abernethy stated. “This hidden multiplier is missing from the models guiding climate policy, so those models are likely underestimating how much warming is coming — and overestimating how much carbon we can still afford to emit.”
Missing multipliers in global policy models
The comprehensive study represents the largest effort to date to quantify the combined impacts of four major natural carbon feedbacks: thawing permafrost, wildfires, warming wetlands, and inland freshwaters. While climate models traditionally account for physical feedbacks such as atmospheric water vapour and changes in ocean absorption, they have largely overlooked warming-induced biological emissions.
Co-author Dr Brian Buma, senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, warned that policy delays aggravate these natural triggers. “This research makes clear that the Earth and climate system doesn’t stand still while we debate policy,” Buma noted. “Emissions from permafrost, wetlands, and wildfire could meaningfully erode our remaining time to warming thresholds — and they are unaccounted for in most scenarios.”
Even under optimistic decarbonisation pathways where human activity achieves net-zero emissions, the researchers found that greenhouse gas feedbacks from natural systems would still contribute an additional 0.2°C of warming by 2100.
Urgent call for updated emission budgets
The findings arrive as global temperatures approach critical planetary thresholds. As natural ecosystems transition from absorbing carbon to actively emitting methane and carbon dioxide, the margin of error for international climate targets continues to shrink.
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Co-author Professor Rob Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project at Stanford University, emphasised the immediate operational threat to global climate targets. “The disruption of the world’s carbon cycles is now being seen in real time,” Jackson explained. “The results are a wake-up call, and they must be included in the next generation of climate policies. Failure to do so will make meeting the world’s climate goals less and less likely.”