The wonder of wetlands: the secret weapon in the battle against climate change

Saltmarshes can store carbon from the atmosphere fifty times faster than a tropical forest. As part of our monthly update on the state of our planet we visit the Venice lagoon with scientists working to protect these special wetlands and ask if these environments could be nature's secret weapon against climate change.

Firstly, here is our unique monthly update on what's really happening to our planet with the latest data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service for January 2022.

On a global level temperatures last month were 0.3 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

There were some notable hotspots around the planet. In Argentina the ongoing heatwave meant the country set 75 new high temperature records for January.

Eastern Canada and the US was colder than average and then across Russia all the way to Kamchatka peninsula it was much warmer last month.

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Zooming in on Europe, in the middle of the month, Oslo hit an all time high for January of 12.5 degrees. Then in most of France and parts of Spain it was cooler.

Staying in Spain, the Iberian peninsula continues to be much drier than average. This graphic below shows the soil moisture anomaly for January, and that's the continuation of a trend over the past four months.

Saltmarshes are havens of biodiversity and act as natural barriers to storms - but they can also sequester carbon from the atmosphere 50 times faster than a tropical forest. Setting off from St Mark's Square we went on a mission to discover the salt marshes of the Venice lagoon.

Today the marsh land around the Italian city is 43 km2, which allows it to sequester around 25 percent of the CO2 emitted from boat traffic. Two hundred years ago the wetlands stretched over 180km2, which would be enough to