The Chinese reforestation maneuver is bearing the hoped-for results

According to the study "Large Chinese land carbon sink estimated from atmospheric carbon dioxide data", published in Nature by a team of Chinese and British researchers, "Chinese vegetation absorbs almost half of the country's estimated annual carbon dioxide emissions", a percentage much higher than previously thought.

The study estimates that, between 2010 and 2016, Chinese CO2 sinks, i.e. the territory's ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, stored about 45% of the emissions of the People's Republic. The new data, published in Nature, revealed higher than expected CO2 uptake - and active year round - in the southwestern Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi.

The research team also discovered a large seasonal carbon sink in northeastern China, specifically in Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, which absorbs carbon during the growing season and releases it naturally during the rest of the year. Taken together, these areas account for just over 35% of China's entire terrestrial carbon "sink".

The terrestrial biosphere in southwestern China, by far the largest single absorption region, represents a sink of approximately 0.35 petagrams per year, which represents 31.5% of the Earth's carbon sink. A petagram is one billion tons.

The terrestrial biosphere on seasonal northeastern China has a net annual balance of approximately -0.05 petagrams, which represents approximately 4.5% of China's terrestrial carbon sinks. "To contextualize these numbers - says the Anglo-Chinese team - in 2017 China emitted 2.67 petagrams of carbon as a consequence of the use of fossil fuels".

Researchers from China and the UK plan to refine their findings so far by using more terrestrial and satellite data to improve estimates of CO2 fluxes and want to focus on smaller areas, such as cities.