According to a new research, quantity of carbon absorbed by the Amazon rainforest has decreased by approximately one-third in the past 10 years. It was found in the study of 321 plots in parts of the Amazon that growth of forest had failed to increase in the past few years. It was also found that the net amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the forest had declined from 2.0 billion tonnes a year in the 1990s to 1.4 billion tonnes in the 2000s.

Roel Brienen of the University of Leeds told Reuters that the net carbon uptake of forests has considerably declined and in the forest, trees are growing faster and are also dying faster. According to Professor David Ellsworth, senior scientific advisor for the Eucalyptus Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (EucFACE) experiment in the Cumberland Plain forest, the findings of the study have many suggestions.

According to him, "It is just enormous, because the land area were talking about is huge. The tropics represent an extremely large sink for carbon; carbon that they are not storing is landing in the atmosphere and results in rising atmospheric rising of Co2".

He added that humans depend on plants for reduction of rise in atmospheric Co2 since they absorb carbon and cleanse the air. He added that if trees absorb less carbon than what is thought, other alternatives are needed for reducing rise in Co2 in the atmosphere.

According to the scientists of the study, it was not clear that whether the decrease would continue and if the same can occur in other tropical forests such as the Congo basin or Indonesia. Scientists examined 200,000 trees across eight countries in order to measure changes. They analyzed the changes in diameter, height, wood density and births and deaths.