Warming of northern peatlands increases the global temperature overshoot challenge.

Abstract

Meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature goals requires limiting future carbon emissions, yet current policies make temporarily overshooting the 1.5°C target likely. The potential climate feedback from destabilizing peatlands, storing large amounts of carbon, remains poorly quantified. Using the reduced-complexity Earth System Model OSCAR with an integrated peat carbon module, we found that across various overshoot pathways that temporarily exceed 1.5°C-2.5°C, northern peatlands exhibit net positive feedback, amplifying the overshoot challenge. Warming increases peatlands' net carbon uptake, but this is largely offset by higher methane emissions. We estimated that for each 1°C increase in peak warming, the positive feedback from peatlands decreases the remaining carbon budget by 37 GtCO₂ (22-48 GtCO₂). If the 1.5°C temperature target is exceeded, peatlands would increase carbon removal requirement by about 40 GtCO₂ (16-60 GtCO₂) (8.6%). Our findings highlight the importance of properly accounting for northern peatlands for estimating climate feedbacks, especially under overshoot scenarios.