According to a new study, forests on Earth will take more time to recover from adverse conditions of climate change than what was thought earlier. The study indicates that forests are taking up less carbon than what was considered before.

By making use of computer modeling, researchers have always considered that trees quickly recovered from droughts and other weather conditions. However, according to the new study of effect of droughts on the world's forests, that hypothesis was not true.

Lead author of the study, William Anderegg, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah, who performed much of the work in this study while at Princeton University, says that trees are affected from a drought for approximately four years.

According to him, "Drought is always (thought of) as a light switch: when it's dry, trees grow slowly, but the moment the rains come back and the soil gets wetter, it's like the trees recover perfectly and almost immediately". However that hypothesis is not considered true and it is difficult for a tree to recover prior to occurrence of the next drought. He added that if forests are not properly storing carbon dioxide, this indicates that climate change would accelerate.

Anderegg's colleagues who co-authored the study included researchers from Northern Arizona University, Princeton University, Pyrenean Institute Of Ecology, University of Nevada-Reno, Arizona State University, University of New Mexico, US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.