Sharjah24 – AFP: Hammered by climate change and relentless deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is losing its capacity to recover and could irretrievably transition into savannah, with dire consequences for the region and the world, according to a study published Monday.
Researchers warned that the results mean the Amazon could be approaching a so-called "tipping point" faster than previously understood.
Analysing 25 years of satellite data, researchers measured for the first time the Amazon's resilience against shocks such as droughts and fires, a key indicator of overall health.
This has declined across more than three-quarters of the Amazon basin, home to half the world's rainforest, they reported in Nature Climate Change.
In areas hit hardest by destruction or drought, the forest's ability to bounce back was reduced by approximately half, co-author Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, told said.
"Our resilience measure changed by more than a factor of two in the places nearer to human activity and in places that are driest," he said in an interview.
Climate models have suggested that global heating -- which has on average warmed Earth's surface 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels -- could by itself push the Amazon past a point of no return into a far drier savannah-like state.
If carbon pollution continues unabated, that scenario could be locked in by mid-century, according to some models.
Besides the Amazon, ice sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and the Atlantic ocean current are all are vulnerable to tipping points that could radically alter the world as we know it.
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