Researchers Hope the ‘World’s Loneliest Tree’ Can Answer Some Climate Questions

Researchers in New Zealand hope that a tree known as the “loneliest tree in the world” can help answer climate questions. The Sitka spruce stands tall on the uninhabited Campbell Island, and a team of New Zealand researchers has been keeping the giant company as they believe it could unlock some climate change secrets.

The tree is nearly 30 feet tall and holds the Guinness World Record title for the “remotest tree” on the planet. It is the only tree on the island that sits a little over 400 miles away from south New Zealand. Although the tree’s exact age is now known, it is believed that New Zealand’s governor planted it in the early 1900s.

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Dr. Jocelyn Turnbull, a radiocarbon science leader at GNS Science believes that the tree could be an excellent tool in understanding what is happening with the uptake of carbon dioxide in the Southern Ocean, The Guardian reported.

“Of the CO2 that we produce from burning fossil fuels and put into the atmosphere, only about half stays there and the other half goes into the land and the ocean,” Turnbull said.

“It turns out the Southern Ocean – one of those carbon sinks – has taken up about 10% of all of the emissions that we have produced over the last 150 years.”

Turnbull is working with the Deep South National Science Challenge, the Antarctic Science Platform, and the National Institute for Water and Atmospherics to try to understand where the carbon is going in the Southern Ocean.

Human-caused climate change is warming our oceans and harming ecosystems all over the world. The best thing you can do to help fight Climate change is to go vegan. With the latest IPCC report that says it’s ‘now or never ‘to take action against Climate change, we need to act fast!

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