A new study reveals that future climate change could significantly reduce the Amazon rainforest’s capacity to act as a crucial carbon sink, with potentially devastating global consequences.
The Amazon’s Vital Role
The Amazon — frequently called “the planet’s lungs” because it can store emissions on a massive scale. It is the largest tropical forest in the world, and plays a key role in the climate system globally. Yet, climate change is a significant danger to the Amazonian forest and, hence, for its service as one of Orinoco´s watersheds.
The research published in Nature Communications focuses on the future impact of climate change on the Amazon’s carbon cycle. The researchers were able to use the latest generation of Earth system models to isolate the climate change impacts from those related to deforestation and the CO2 fertilization effect on photosynthesis.
Changing Patterns and Lower Moisture
The results of the study are extremely troubling. But researchers warn that climate change may prove this a one-time-only carbon sink; further warming could turn the Amazon into a chronic carbon dynamo, emitting more than its fair share of greenhouse gases each year. This is known as polar amplification, and it means that warming is even more intense in the polar regions than in other parts of the world.
That would move the so-called intertropical convergence zone, a tropical rain belt that is vital to the Amazon’s climate, and turn it into a drier and hotter place. The consequence would be that the carbon-absorbing ability of the rainforest was reduced and the production of carbon dioxide by plants and respiration in soils increased. When combined with the increased danger of droughts and wildfires in the warmer, drier climate, this could effectively result in a carbon leak from the rainforest.
Conclusion
These results are cause for alarm because they suggest that the Amazon — a critical global carbon sink, or natural storehouse for carbon dioxide (CO2) captured during photosynthesis — may be at risk of losing this ability. This also has major ramifications for the broader global climate, and highlights the immediate necessity of implementing measures to prevent ourselves from hurtling toward a catastrophic future.
