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"Tropical forests used to absorb carbon. Now they emit as much as all US transit" - a standout headline as a new study published by Science magazine caused a bit of a media stir. Once considered an all important carbon sink, the study is suggesting that tropical forests have reached a significant turning point.

The oceans near Antarctica that absorb carbon and protect our planet from climate change have been working robustly in the past decade, finds a new study published yesterday in Science.

Currently, around one-fourth of human generated carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by oceans, making them the world's largest carbon sink. But researchers from Newcastle, Heriot-Watt and Exeter Universities found that surfactants, invisible biological particles on the ocean's surface, can reduce the exchange of gases between the ocean and the air by up to 50 percent.

Forests are massive carbon sinks, and the U.S., alongside other developed countries, are donating large sums of money to protect these carbon-rich landscapes from deforestation.

New research on progress towards ending deforestation by 2030 shows funding is woefully short, while indigenous groups say their role as protectors of the forest is under increasing threat. Recent news that the world's tropical forests are now so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions have injected new urgency into the need to achieve the goals set out in the New York Declaration on Forests four years ago.