Climate change: Met Office launches new experiment in Amazon rainforest

The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest and is crucial in helping us tackle climate change

The Met Office has announced that it's launching an experiment that will measure the Amazon rainforest's response to climate change.

Speaking at an event at COP26, researchers explained they will pump controlled amounts of carbon into small areas of the rainforest in Brazil in a process called Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE).

The experiment - named AmazonFACE - will then measure how this carbon affects the trees, and use this information to get more accurate predictions of how rainforests can help in the fight against climate change.

It's the first time this has been done on a large scale in a rainforest, with the researchers saying it will be "one of the largest open-air laboratories in the world".

The Met Office will work in partnership with Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA).

Research scientist at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and AmazonFACE scientific coordinator David Lapola said: "This is a long-awaited experiment that will be a game-changer on our understanding of the extent to which tropical forests can help humanity [remove] greenhouse-gas emissions and how vulnerable they are to global climate change."

They anticipate that the first two plots will be starting the experiment by the end of 2022.

Forests help us fight climate change, but they are also impacted by it

Professor of Terrestrial Ecosystem Science at the University of Exeter Iain Hartley added: "This major new Brazilian-led project has the potential to be one of the most important global change experiments in the world, and to answer major scientific and socially-relevant research questions in a way that has not previously been possible."

What is the Met Office?

The Met Office is the national meteorological service for the UK.

Meteorology is an area of science that looks at the world's atmosphere, and how it impacts weather. Meteorologists are the people who predict the weather so we can have the forecasts on the news.

Why is the Met Office doing this experiment?

Forests are very important in the fight against climate change, as they take in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that is responsible for warming our planet.

Lots has been said at the COP26 climate conference about why we need to protect our forests, and a pledge has been made to stop and reverse deforestation.

But the Met Office thinks this experiment will allow us to see how trees will react when there's even more carbon in our atmosphere in the future.

They've said the AmazonFACE experiment will "work like a time machine" - they'll replicate what the conditions are projected to be like in 2050, and measure how the forest copes.

This, they think, can help us achieve goals set at COP26 and elsewhere, as it will mean emissions targets can be set based on how much carbon the rainforest can safely absorb.