The destruction of tropical peatland forests is causing them to haemorrhage carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, scientists say.

The research, published in Nature, suggests peatland contributions to climate change have been badly underestimated.

‘If you don’t consider carbon lost through drainage then you underestimate the carbon losses from these deforested sites by 22 per cent,’ says Dr Vincent Gauci of the Open University, one of the study’s authors. ‘And that’s a conservative estimate; it could be much higher.’