Evidence item

By repeating the process across temperatures spanning a desert night and a desert afternoon, she found that the soils took up more carbon dioxide as they cooled and released it as they warmed, confirming that the nighttime uptake is driven by adsorption, not biology.

When scaled globally, the authors estimate that between one and three gigatons (1-3 GT) of carbon—roughly one-tenth to one-third of annual human emissions—move into and out of desert soils each year. The exact figure could be higher, as the estimate is based solely on Mojave soils.