Overview

• Peer-reviewed results in Nature Communications report a 42–204% rise in soil CO₂ release from warmed plots in a Puerto Rican rainforest over one year.
• The TRACE project used overhead infrared heaters to simulate future temperatures, marking the first experimental warming of a tropical rainforest ecosystem.
• Analyses indicate microbes, rather than plant roots, accounted for the large increase in soil respiration under warming.
• Researchers caution that if similar responses occur across regions and persist over time, tropical soils could shift from carbon sinks to net sources and amplify warming.
• Soils store more carbon than the atmosphere and all terrestrial plants combined, underscoring calls to test durability across sites and to integrate microbial processes into climate models.