NEWS AND VIEWS: According to a study, it appears that the Amazoncould be heading towards a tipping point where a combination of events result in this great jungle of 400 billion trees collapsing into a grassy Savannah or a degraded ecosystem.
The Times reports that about 50% of the Amazon could be at risk of reaching a tipping point in around 2050 because of water stress according to the study.
The information is shocking to anybody concerned about the planet. The world’s largest rainforest has been studied for years and it appears that climate change in conjunction with deforestation is driving it to a tipping point as mentioned.
And if that tipping point arrives it would be a catastrophe for the plethora of animal species, plants and the 2.2 million indigenous people living in the Amazon.
Further, if this tipping point is reached it would accelerate climate change because at the moment the Amazon is a brake on global warming because of the carbon absorbed by the billions of trees.
Bernardo Flores of the Federal University of Santa Catarina is the lead scientist of a team which examined the main drivers of the Amazon’s trees not getting enough water and they are:
- climate change
- annual rainfall
- rainfall intensity
- the length of the dry season
- the rate of deforestation
He said that, “Local consequences involve climatic changes that could make some parts of the Amazon practically impossible to live in, too arid. These changes in the Amazon would likely affect rainfall conditions in other regions of South America and also in other continents, by altering large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.”
The Times Report says that the Amazon has changed dramatically since 1979. The dry season for the Amazon has extended by up to 5 weeks. For thousands of years the dry season was between three and four months long in the region.
There have been severe droughts in recent years. I recently wrote about dolphins being cooked in the superheated rivers which was an appalling story. See link below.
Scientists have linked climate change to an exceptional drought across the Amazon basin since the middle of last year.
How the rainforest reacts to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere as humankind grapples with trying to curb the burning of fossil fuels, makes it uncertain as to when the tipping point referred to will occur.
