In addition to the Pacific, two climate extremes on the far sides of the globe - the Amazon rainforest and the Tibetan plateau - have been found to be strongly correlated. Scientists have found that changes in the South American ecosystem can trigger changes near the Himalayas, explains Jürgen Kurths of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "When the Amazon warms, Tibet warms, so there is a positive correlation in temperature; and the opposite is true for precipitation; when there is more rainfall in the Amazon, there is less snowfall in Tibet. " Logging, road construction, and warming are already putting pressure on the Amazon rainforest, and if climate change in the region also affects other parts of the world with negative impacts, the consequences will be even more unpleasant.
This is true not only for the Amazon and Tibetan regions, but researchers have used data from the past 40 years to analyze near-surface air temperature changes at more than 65,000 sub-regional nodes in a grid pattern on Earth. The analysis allowed the researchers to see how changes in one node affected changes in another. This correlation is known as "tipping cascades," which means that interrelated tipping elements in the Earth system can trigger each other, and the results of this correlation can affect entire societies and threaten important parts of the biosphere.
We need to take seriously the risk of dumping cascades, which can be achieved by rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing nature-based solutions to mitigate global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Olafur Eliasson installs giant blocks of glacial ice across London | The Ice Watch Project
02. WOOD BUILDINGS ARE ONE OF THE SOLUTIONS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
"However, this risk to the climate system can be transformed into a powerful means of mitigating climate change by significantly increasing the use of engineered wood on a global scale. Our analysis shows that this potential can be realized under two conditions. First, the harvested forests are sustainably managed. Second, waste wood material from wood building demolition can be recycled in a variety of ways."
A new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows that the material revolution of replacing cement and steel with wood in urban buildings can have a double benefit for climate stability. First, it can avoid greenhouse gas emissions from cement and steel production. Second, it can turn buildings into carbon-absorbing reservoirs because it stores the carbon dioxide that trees absorb from the air in the form of engineered wood.
To reach net zero emissions by mid-century, we need carbon sinks that can absorb CO2 to balance the remaining unavoidable emissions, such as those from agriculture. Wood-frame buildings can accomplish such a balance of emissions while meeting the enormous demand for new housing and commercial construction created by urbanization and population growth.
In addition, in a time of climate instability, mankind is frequently confronted with various natural disasters, one of which is hill fires, whose most direct impact on society includes the burning of houses and land.
Wood as a building material has many interesting characteristics; for example, large structural timbers are relatively resistant to fire - if burned, their inner core is protected by a charred layer, making it difficult for fire to actually destroy them. This is contrary to the popular assumptions fueled by fires in light frame construction. Building codes in many countries already recognize these properties.
© Think Wood
A five-story residential building of laminated timber construction can store 180 kilograms of carbon per square meter, three times more than the carbon stored in a natural forest with high carbon density.
This ratio means that we could, in the future: store at least 10 million tons of carbon per year, and up to nearly 700 million tons of carbon, reducing the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions created by reinforced concrete buildings by at least half.
This may not seem like much compared to the current carbon emissions of about 11,000 million tons per year, yet a shift to wood would have a considerable impact on achieving the climate stabilization goals of the Paris agreement. Timber cities could save over 100 Gt of additional CO2 emissions by 2100, equivalent to 10% of the remaining carbon budget to meet the Paris 2°C target.
04. WHAT ARE THE PREREQUISITES FOR WOOD BUILDINGS TO EXERT THEIR POWER
The key to the power of wood buildings is to have sufficient volume of wood buildings that can efficiently and adequately perform the task of being an emissions-reducing, carbon-absorbing reservoir. The prerequisite for achieving sufficient building mass is that we have access to sufficient wood. Scientists have summarized multiple lines of evidence, from official harvest statistics to sophisticated simulation models, and found that the untapped timber harvest potential could theoretically meet the needs of 10 percent of timber scenarios. It could even cover 50% and 90% of the timber demand if the per capita area of buildings worldwide does not increase but remains at the current average level.
Increasing forest harvesting levels should be done while protecting the most valuable forests. Christopher Reyer from PIK emphasized, "Protecting forests from unsustainable harvesting and a wide range of other threats is key if timber use is to increase significantly. Our vision for sustainable forest management and governance can really improve the condition of forests around the world as they are given more attention."
In addition to this, Christopher Reyer mentioned the need for plantations to meet timber demand, including the cultivation of fast-growing bamboo by small-scale landowners in tropical and subtropical regions. Such plantations do not affect food production - with the help of the global land use allocation model MAgPIE, scientists have made different simulations of land use scenarios and have concluded that timber demand can already be met by timber plantations established in natural forests, i.e., when we harvest forests. This means that the timber plantations can be established in situ while the forests are being harvested, without taking up additional agricultural land and thus increasing competition for land resources.
"Trees provide us with an unparalleled and perfect technology," said Mr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "They extract carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and smoothly convert it into oxygen for We breathe, and form carbon in the trunks of trees for our use. In my opinion, there is no safer way to store carbon than this.
For many centuries, society has been able to build well with wood, yet now the challenge of climate stabilization requires us to get very serious about scaling up wood construction. If we design wood as a modern building material and skillfully manage harvesting and construction, we humans can build a safe home for ourselves on the planet."
03. HOW MUCH POWER CAN WOOD BUILDINGS EXERT
Assuming that we do nothing and leave business as usual, only 0.5% of new buildings will be constructed wood by 2050, while continuing to build concrete and steel, and following the trend of increasing floor space per capita, the final calculated cumulative carbon emissions will be more than one-fifth of the 2050 carbon emissions budget, which is far from contributing to controlling global warming, and governments' commitments in the commitment of governments to keep warming below 2°C in the Paris agreement will be difficult to achieve.
So how much room is there to increase the share of new buildings built with wood in the future?
According to data cited in the 2020 China-Europe Forest Bioeconomy Assessment and Outlook that modern wood-structure buildings only account for some 0.35% of the building stock in China (He et al., 2019), and as mentioned in the 2022 New Eurupe Bauhaus "Into the Woods" keynote speech that in Europe, where wood-frame construction is well developed, only 3% of the overall material input is wood.
With a corresponding increase in large-scale timber production, the proportion of wood buildings could be increased to 10% or 50%. If countries with currently low levels of industrialization also make the transition, It is also conceivable that the world will have 90% of wood buildings in the future.
© Jack Hobhouse | Place School Refectory by Maccreanor Lavington
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/el-nino-phenomenon-2024-could-be-warmest-year-ever
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This ratio means that we could, in the future: store at least 10 million tons of carbon per year, and up to nearly 700 million tons of carbon, reducing the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions created by reinforced concrete buildings by at least half.
This may not seem like much compared to the current carbon emissions of about 11,000 million tons per year, yet a shift to wood would have a considerable impact on achieving the climate stabilization goals of the Paris agreement. Timber cities could save over 100 Gt of additional CO2 emissions by 2100, equivalent to 10% of the remaining carbon budget to meet the Paris 2°C target.
04. WHAT ARE THE PREREQUISITES FOR WOOD BUILDINGS TO EXERT THEIR POWER
The key to the power of wood buildings is to have sufficient volume of wood buildings that can efficiently and adequately perform the task of being an emissions-reducing, carbon-absorbing reservoir. The prerequisite for achieving sufficient building mass is that we have access to sufficient wood. Scientists have summarized multiple lines of evidence, from official harvest statistics to sophisticated simulation models, and found that the untapped timber harvest potential could theoretically meet the needs of 10 percent of timber scenarios. It could even cover 50% and 90% of the timber demand if the per capita area of buildings worldwide does not increase but remains at the current average level.
Increasing forest harvesting levels should be done while protecting the most valuable forests. Christopher Reyer from PIK emphasized, "Protecting forests from unsustainable harvesting and a wide range of other threats is key if timber use is to increase significantly. Our vision for sustainable forest management and governance can really improve the condition of forests around the world as they are given more attention."
In addition to this, Christopher Reyer mentioned the need for plantations to meet timber demand, including the cultivation of fast-growing bamboo by small-scale landowners in tropical and subtropical regions. Such plantations do not affect food production - with the help of the global land use allocation model MAgPIE, scientists have made different simulations of land use scenarios and have concluded that timber demand can already be met by timber plantations established in natural forests, i.e., when we harvest forests. This means that the timber plantations can be established in situ while the forests are being harvested, without taking up additional agricultural land and thus increasing competition for land resources.
"Trees provide us with an unparalleled and perfect technology," said Mr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "They extract carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and smoothly convert it into oxygen for We breathe, and form carbon in the trunks of trees for our use. In my opinion, there is no safer way to store carbon than this.
For many centuries, society has been able to build well with wood, yet now the challenge of climate stabilization requires us to get very serious about scaling up wood construction. If we design wood as a modern building material and skillfully manage harvesting and construction, we humans can build a safe home for ourselves on the planet."
Images
Multiple
Author
Jade Wang
Location
Berlin, Germany
Published
06/03/23
Reading time
20 min
TRENDING TOPICS
Can buildings become global carbon sinks?
An Effective Strategy for Mitigating Climate Change
Author
Jade Wang
Credits
Location
Berlin, Germany
Published
06/03/23
Reading time
20 min
Images
Multiple
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has published a series of studies regarding climate change and the possibility of wood buildings as carbon sinks, suggesting that wood buildings can serve as a global carbon sink to help mitigate global warming in the face of climate change. Design Warehouse has cited and made the following summary based on PIK's previously released news in order to raise awareness of climate change and how wood buildings can be solutions.
01. THE PROBLEM OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS SEVERE
2024 is likely to be the hottest year on record - scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the University of Giessen in Germany and two universities in Beijing have shown in a recent analysis that the Pacific region is likely to experience another "El Niño" as early as this fall The probability of another "El Niño" climate phenomenon in the Pacific as early as this fall is close to 90%. El Niño increases global temperatures in the short term and is accompanied by many extreme weather events, such as heavy rains in Peru and droughts in Australia and Indonesia.