Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge

Zhu, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9360-6797, Qiu, C., Gasser, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4882-2647, Ciais, P., Lamboll, R.D., Ballantyne, A., Chang, J., Chaudhary, N., Gallego-Sala, A.V., Guenet, B., Holden, J., Joos, F., Kleinen, T., Kwon, M.J., Melnikova, I., Müller, J., Page, S., Salmon, E., Schleussner, C.-F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8471-848X, Schurgers, Guy., et al. (2025). Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge. One Earth p. 101353. 10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101353. (In Press)

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Abstract

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals requires limiting future carbon emissions, yet current policies make temporarily overshooting the 1.5°C target likely. The potential climate feedback from destabilizing peatlands, storing large amounts of carbon, remains poorly quantified. Using the reduced-complexity Earth System Model OSCAR with an integrated peat carbon module, we found that across various overshoot pathways that temporarily exceed 1.5°C–2.5°C, northern peatlands exhibit net positive feedback, amplifying the overshoot challenge. Warming increases peatlands’ net carbon uptake, but this is largely offset by higher methane emissions. We estimated that for each 1°C increase in peak warming, the positive feedback from peatlands decreases the remaining carbon budget by 37 GtCO2 (22–48 GtCO2). If the 1.5°C temperature target is exceeded, peatlands would increase carbon removal requirement by about 40 GtCO2 (16–60 GtCO2) (8.6%). Our findings highlight the importance of properly accounting for northern peatlands for estimating climate feedbacks, especially under overshoot scenarios.

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