Visualization of simulated afforestation/reforestation to mitigate climate change

Afforestation/Reforestation can be a useful tool to mitigate climate change. This is primarily done by sequestering CO2 into the newly planted forests through the photosynthetic process, thus reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. The visualization shows results from a new work by Moustakis et al. (2024), who employ the Max Planck Institute’s Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) to quantify the mitigation potential of the ambitious deployment of Afforestation/Reforestation in the range of country pledges for the case of a temperature overshoot trajectory.
The globe one the left shows the forestation pattern compared to 2015 described by the constructed scenario, which is constrained by techno-economic considerations, restoration potential and biodiversity maps, reaching 595 Mha by 2060, and 935 Mha by 2100. The resulting total global forest area change is shown in the lower left.
With the MPI-ESM, multiple realizations of the reference (constant land use) and of the Afforestation/Reforestation scenario are simulated to quantify the mitigation potential in terms of globally averaged temperature (lower right panel, the mean is shown). Results suggest that Afforestation/Reforestation reduces peak temperature by 0.08˚C and end-of-century temperature by 0.2˚C, while the overshoot period (i.e., temperature higher than 1.5˚C) lasts 13 years less.
The difference between the reference and the Afforestation/Reforestation scenario starts to emerge already after 2052 (blue shading). This mitigation is the outcome of reducing atmospheric CO2 levels by 283 GtCO2 (36 ppm) overall by 2100. The pattern of temperature change (upper right panel) shows a widespread cooling across the globe under Afforestation/Reforestation compared to the reference scenario. These results highlight the effectiveness of large-scale deployment of Afforestation/Reforestation in mitigating global temperature.
Moustakis, Y., Nützel, T., Wey, H.W., Bao, W. and Pongratz, J., 2024, Temperature overshoot responses to ambitious forestation in an Earth System Model, Nature Communications (in preparation)
Simulation: LMU
Visualization: DKRZ