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Scientists claim to have located the ‘missing carbon sink’ in tropical forests that are absorbing around one billion tonnes more carbon than previously thought. Jane Burgermeister investigates.

They looked for it here and they looked for it there, but the carbon had vanished into thin air. So it seemed in the case of the ‘missing carbon sink’, a billion tonnes of human-generated carbon assumed to be absorbed by northern forests, but unaccounted for in field studies. Scientists now say they have located the missing carbon in tropical forests that are removing much higher quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than realized.