A new study published Wednesday adds to mounting evidence that the world’s tropical forests could soon stop serving their climate crisis-mitigating role of carbon sinks.

“After years of work deep in the Congo and Amazon rainforests, we’ve found that one of the most worrying impacts of climate change has already begun. This is decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models,” said Simon Lewis, a senior author of the study and a professor from the School of Geography at the U.K.’s University of Leeds.

“There is no time to lose in terms of tackling climate change,” said Lewis.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, represent the collaborative effort of roughly 100 institutions in which researchers tracked some 300,000 trees spanning 565 patches of undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the […]