A recent study by NASA reveals that tropical forests can absorb a lot more carbon dioxide than the average forest, as well as a lot more carbon dioxide than we previously thought.

According to the University Herald, tropical forests absorb 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion, which is much more than the boreal forests of Canada, Siberia, and other northern regions.

David Schimel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, stated, 
"This is good news, because uptake in boreal forests is already slowing, while tropical forests may continue to take up carbon for many years," conveying his excitement at the finding.

Science Daily reports that forests and other land vegetation are responsible for removing up to 30% of human carbon dioxide emissions during the process of photosynthesis. This means that if the forests' rate of carbon dioxide absorption were to slow down, the rate of global warming would simultaneously speed up.

In order to come up with these findings, researchers at NASA compared computer models of ecosystem processes, atmospheric models run backward in time to deduce the sources of today's concentrations (called inverse models), satellite images, data from experimental forest plots, and more.

Study co-author Joshua Fisher of JPL stated, "Until our analysis, no one had successfully completed a global reconciliation of information about carbon dioxide effects from the atmospheric, forestry and modeling communities." He continued, "It is incredible that all these different types of independent data sources start to converge on an answer."

Co-author Britton Stephens also commented, "It has big implications for our understanding of whether global terrestrial ecosystems might continue to offset our carbon dioxide emissions or might begin to exacerbate climate change."

Furthermore, the study's findings indicate we should be doing more to protect our tropical forests - deforestation and particularly the burning of wood will project higher amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.