'It's Really Close': How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self-Destruct
Source: New York Times
‘It’s Really Close’: How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self-Destruct
Climate change and man-made fires could set off a cycle of self-perpetuating deforestation, scientists warn.
By Max Fisher
Aug. 30, 2019
As fires rage across the Amazon, a growing number of scientists are raising the alarm about a nightmare scenario that could see much of the world’s largest rainforest erased from the earth.
Climate change, along with the fires and other man-made forces, appear on the verge of triggering a significant change in the Amazon’s weather system.
No one knows for sure whether and when this might happen, though some scientists who study the Amazon ecosystem call it imminent. If it does happen, a body of research suggests, the Amazon as a whole would cross a tipping point and begin to self-destruct — a process of self-perpetuating deforestation known as dieback.
If that is left unchecked, half or more of the rainforest could erode into savanna, according to some estimates, and then the rainforest, which has long absorbed the world’s greenhouse gases, could instead begin to emit them.
The Amazon’s plant life stores an estimated 100 billion tons of carbon. By comparison, every coal plant worldwide combined emitted 15 billion tons of carbon in 2017. So even if only a small proportion of the trees destroyed by large-scale deforestation burn, this longtime buffer against climate change could instead become a driver of it.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-fires-climate.html
