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Since plants absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, the continent of Africa, which has abundant rainforests, seems to be the representative carbon dioxide sink of the Earth. However, it is said that through satellite observation, it has been discovered that a lot of carbon dioxide is emitted from the African continent.
A research team at the University of Edinburgh in the UK investigated which areas on Earth are absorbing or emitting carbon dioxide based on data collected from satellites.
This shows that most of South America and northern Australia, which have rainforests in the Amazon River basin, absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide. Africa is also similar in the southern region centered on the Congo Basin. However, the regions where western Africa and Ethiopia are located are said to emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide.
As a result of calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emissions in this region, the research team found that carbon dioxide emissions in the tropical regions of northern Africa amounted to 1 to 1.5 billion tons per year. This is comparable to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 200 million automobiles per year.
The research team estimates that the cause of this carbon dioxide emission in Africa is due to land use by humans. Areas that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide once had abundant nature, but most of them were lost by deforestation for agriculture. As a result, it is highly likely that the local soil deteriorated and the carbon dioxide accumulated in the soil over a long period of time was released into the atmosphere at once.
The effects of large-scale climate change can also be seen. Professor Oliver Phillips at Leeds University pointed out that there was a massive El Niño outbreak in the area from 2015 to 2016, and tropical temperatures had risen record highs. It is a view that the rise in temperature due to the abnormal climate accelerated the destruction of the ecosystem and the emission of carbon dioxide. This study can be said to have uncovered a new source of carbon dioxide emission that was not known until now. The research team suggested that global warming measures such as the Paris Agreement should be further considered. Related information can be found here .
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