Abstract: Forests play an important role in sequestering carbon and are being increasingly considered as “nature-based climate solutions” to mitigate climate change. However, the responses of forest carbon dynamics to climate variability remain elusive. Therefore, this study aims to explore the sensitivity of forest carbon dynamics to changes in climate drivers and climate-sensitive disturbance such as wildfire. In this study, we used a global annual aboveground live biomass dataset to explore the sensitivity of forest carbon to climate variables including temperature, precipitation, and fire in global intact forests over past two decades. We found increasing temperature was associated with increased forest carbon stocks over northern high latitudes and African rainforests. However, increasing temperature was associated with decreased forest carbon stocks in Amazon forests. Increasing precipitation was correlated with increased forest carbon stocks in most intact forest areas, although increasing precipitation was associated with decreased forest carbon stocks in some areas of Amazon forests. Moreover, increasing fires were generally associated with decreased forest carbon stocks. Our results reveal the responses of forest carbon dynamics to climate fluctuations over past two decades, which can help better understand the climate mitigation potential of Earth’s forests in the coming decades.
