A small percentage of leaves on trees in tropical forests may be approaching the maximum temperature threshold for photosynthesis to work.
Modelling suggests that tropical forests can withstand up to a 3.9 °C increase over current air temperatures before a potential tipping point, therefore action is needed to protect the fate of tropical forests under futureTropical forests serve as critical carbon stores and host most of the world’s biodiversity and may be particularly sensitive to increasing temperatures. The critical temperature beyond which photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail averages at about 46.
Christopher Doughty and colleagues used high-resolution measurements of land surface temperatures at a global scale, including Brazil, Puerto Rico and Australia, to estimate peak tropical-forest canopy temperatures. The authors found that canopy temperatures peaked at around 34 °C on average, although a small proportion of those observed exceeded 40 °C.
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