Missing carbon sink found underneath world’s deserts

Beijing: Besides our oceans and plants, the world's deserts may be storing a large portion of carbon dioxide emitted by human activities, a new study suggests. About 40 per cent of carbon dioxide emitted by humans stays in the atmosphere and roughly 30 per cent enters the ocean, according to the US University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Scientists thought the remaining carbon was taken up by plants on land, but measurements show plants do not absorb all of the leftover carbon. Scientists have been searching for a place on land where the additional carbon is being stored - the so-called "missing carbon sink." The new study suggests that massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold a large portion of this missing carbon - more carbon than all the plants on land.

Any carbon dissolved in the water makes its way through the aquifer to the centre of the desert, where it remains for thousands of years, the findings showed. The researchers estimated that the world's desert aquifers contain roughly one trillion metric tonnes of carbon--about a quarter more than the amount stored in living plants on land.