Using data on hurricane paths and strengths to estimate the total loss of biomass in US forests for every year from 1851 to 2000, ecologist Jeffrey Chambers from Tulane University in New Orleans, USA, and his colleagues suggested that an increase in hurricanes and tropical storms induced by global warming could actually turn forests into overall emitters of CO2, further exacerbating climate change.

Over the period studied, hurricanes and tropical storms killed or damaged, on average, about 97 million trees per year in the USA. As this fallen vegetation decomposed, it released an estimated 25 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. According to data from the 1980s – a decade of reduced hurricane damage – forest cover across the USA absorbed nearly a fifth less CO2 than it would have had it remained undamaged.