Original title: Losses outlast gains in Northern Hemisphere tree growth under climate change
Erez Feuer, Stefan Klesse, Guy Amir, Nadav Peleg +1 · September 2026
As the planet warms, will forests grow faster or slower? The answer changes depending on where you look, which makes the big picture hard to see. To find out, scientists studied tree rings. Trees grow a new ring of wood each year, and the ring's width reveals how well the tree grew in that year's weather. The researchers used past rings to learn how climate affects growth, then projected what will happen this century. They found that tree growth drops overall. Losses and gains are also uneven over time. When trees lose growth, they almost never recover, but temporary growth boosts soon fade away. Warming and thirsty air dry out trees, outweighing any benefits from extra rain.
Imagine you are saving money in a piggy bank, but sometimes you have to take money out for emergencies. Usually, when you take a big loss, it takes a long time to save back that amount, and sometimes you never fully recover. Meanwhile, any extra savings you add often get spent quickly on small things, so those gains don't stick. In this paper, tree growth is like the money in the bank: when climate causes a growth loss, it rarely comes back, but when conditions briefly improve, the extra growth is often lost again quickly.
Forests are a key carbon sink, but this study shows that climate-driven growth losses are rarely reversed, while temporary gains fade. That means forests may absorb less carbon in the future than expected, worsening climate projections. Policymakers relying on forest regrowth to offset emissions should account for this persistent decline.
The abstract doesn't specify limitations, but the analysis is restricted to Northern Hemisphere trees and to growth as measured by ring width, which may not reflect changes in biomass or other vital processes. It also relies on CMIP6 climate projections, which carry their own uncertainties. The study does not account for disturbances like fire or pests, which may amplify growth losses.
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Losses outlast gains in Northern Hemisphere tree growth under climate change — Erez Feuer, Stefan Klesse, Guy Amir et al. — bioRxiv — doi:10.64898/2026.09.06.749676
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.