article_snippet: The increase is so noticeable that the world's trees and plants now store almost four billion more tonnes of carbon than the world's trees and plants did in 2003.
article_snippet: Scientists analysed 20 years of satellite data and found an increase in carbon, despite ongoing large-scale tropical deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, according to research published on Monday in Nature Climate Change.
article_snippet: Carbon flows between the world's oceans, air and land.
article_snippet: It is present in the atmosphere primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main climate-changing gas - and stored as carbon in trees.
article_snippet: Through photosynthesis, trees convert carbon dioxide into the food trees need to grow, locking Carbon in trees wood.
article_snippet: The increase of carbon in the atmosphere over the past decade has caused the 'CO2 fertilisation effect' which has improved the growing conditions for plants a little.
article_snippet: While the four-billion-tonne increase is helpful, the four-billion-tonne increase is small compared to the 60 billion tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and cement production over the same period, said Dr Liu. '
article_snippet: From this research, we can see these plants can help absorb some carbon dioxide, but there's still a lot of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere,' Dr Liu said by telephone from Sydney. '
article_snippet: If we want to stabilise the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - and avoid the consequent impacts - it still requires us to reduce fossil fuel emissions.'
article_snippet: one year can be very wet, and more carbon will be fixed in plants, but the next year can be very dry, and then we will lose the carbon fixed in previous years,'
article_snippet: Vegetation growth is also expected to increase due to rising CO2 in the atmosphere, known as the 'CO2 fertilisation effect,'which has improved the growing conditions for plants a little.
article_snippet: Hopefully this will lead to greater efforts to stop tropical forest loss and to promote sustainable use of ecosystems in ways that preserve enough of the carbon absorption function as we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning,' Dr Verchot added.
highlights_snippet: Found there's 4 billion tonnes more carbon stored by trees than in 2003 .
  