https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/24/uk-climate-un-amazon-tipping-point
"Covering an area roughly the size of the contiguous United States and
accounting for more than half of the world’s rainforest, the Amazon exerts
power over the carbon cycle like no other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. The
tree loss from an extremely dry year in 2005, for example, released an
additional quantity of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere equivalent to the
annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined, according to a 2009 study
published in Science magazine.
As more and more of the forest is cut down, researchers say the loss of canopy
risks hitting a limit – a tipping point – after which the forest and local
climate will have changed so radically as to trigger the death of the Amazon as
rainforest. In its place would grow a shorter, drier forest or savannah.
The consequences for biodiversity and climate change would be devastating,
extinguishing thousands of species and releasing such a colossal quantity of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it would sabotage attempts to limit
global climate change.
The Amazon tipping point would mark a final shift in the rainforest’s ability
to sustain itself, an inflection point after which the trees can no longer feed
traversing clouds with enough moisture to create the quantities of rain
required to survive.
Climate models have foreseen other so-called tipping points disrupting Earth’s
long-balanced systems, for example warming that causes Siberian permafrost to
thaw and release huge amounts of emissions, or Greenland’s Ice Sheet melting at
such a rate that annual snowfall can no longer make up for the loss.
Exactly where that point is in the Amazon, science is not yet decided. Some
researchers argue that current modeling isn’t sophisticated enough to predict
such a moment at all. But evidence is mounting that in certain areas, localized
iterations of the tipping point may already be happening.
Reuters has tracked three extended experiences of the Amazon to give a
real-world view of degradation once only predicted by computer simulations."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
