Changes in temperature and precipitation due to rapid deforestation in the Amazon rainforest could also affect the remote Tibetan Plateau and Antarctica.
environment
January 5, 2023
Aerial view of deforested areas in the Amazon rainforest in June 2022 Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images
Rapid deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could affect temperatures and precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau 15,000 kilometers away.
Saini Yang of Beijing Normal University, China, and her colleagues analyzed global climate data from 1979 to 2019 to find correlations in temperature and precipitation between the Amazon rainforest and the rest of the world. identified. Such links are called “teleconnections”.
They focused specifically on the Amazon rainforest. This is due to its importance as a major carbon sink and as a climate ‘tipping point’ where forests can turn into savannas beyond a certain threshold of warming and human deforestation. is.
Researchers have found that since 1979, warmer temperatures in the Amazon correlate with warmer temperatures in the Tibetan Plateau and West Antarctic ice sheets. Increased precipitation in the Amazon was associated with decreased precipitation in those regions.
By analyzing regional temperature changes between the Amazon and those distant regions, we were also able to trace the pathways through which energy or substances such as black carbon released in forest fires propagate through the atmosphere. Their analysis showed that the pathways were consistent under various future warming scenarios.
The collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is a known tipping point. Snowmelt on the Tibetan Plateau is not, but the region is warming more rapidly than the rest of the planet, and changes in snow and ice there will make ecosystems and water dependent on snowmelt. It can affect billions of people around the world. Yan says.
Viktor Brofkin of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany says teleconnections are an interesting discovery, but is skeptical that fluctuations in the Amazon will cause changes elsewhere. It’s an area too small to overcome the effects of tropical oceans, and researchers say they haven’t presented a physical mechanism to explain the effects.
But if the Amazon is impacting these areas, it could mean there is a high risk that the Amazon tipping point could affect other areas, says Potsdam Climate Change, Germany. Jonathan Donguez of the Institute for Impact says: “Adds potential dominoes that can fall.”
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