Is the Amazon Rainforest Making Climate Change Worse?

Forest fires, illegal logging, mining, and anthropological activity have placed immense pressure on the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest. Due to a multitude of factors, it is now nearing a dreaded ecological tipping point, with experts warning of increased risks in total collapse.

With so much at stake, scientists warn that the situation may be far worse than what we realized. New research paints a darker and bleaker future knocking on the Amazon's door in the wake of ceaseless deforestation.

Amazon's Dark Future

The most comprehensive assessment of the Amazon Basin's influence on global climate was published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change entitled, "Carbon and Beyond: The Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly Changing Amazon" found evidence that droughts, fires, and land clearing have released more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere than what plants and soil can store.

This means that contradictory to the initial belief that the Amazon is cooling the atmosphere, it actually does the opposite and further warms the Earth's atmosphere with worrisome effects only expected to grow, says a group of more than 30 scientists behind the extensive research.

Additionally, the jungle cant be relied on when it comes to offsetting greenhouse gas emissions due to anthropogenic activities like burning fossil fuels that are squandering the remaining global carbon budget.

(Photo : Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels)

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CO2 Released by the Amazon Basin

What sets the research apart from previous studies is how researchers tallied up all climate-warming gas cycles throughout the Amazon Basin and into the atmosphere and calculating the direct impacts of human activity on the largest carbon stores on the planet.

Kristofer Covey, lead author, and ecologist at Skidmore Colege tells National Geographic that cutting down forests is significantly interfering with its carbon uptake, which is one of the roots of the problem.

However, Covey adds that when taking other factors into account alongside carbon-dioxide, it's next to impossible to ignore that the Amazon is warming the global climate as a whole.

Various ecological studies and climate research on the Amazon Basin primarily focuses on the forest's uptake and storage capacity of CO2 since it makes up the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions.

Hence, severe forest loss in the Amazon has scientists estimating that the tropical rainforest could flip from functioning as a carbon sink into a carbon source that will release more CO2 than it can hold by 2035.

With the rise of illegal land-clearing activities, researchers are worried that it could hasten the region's approach to a catastrophic tipping point, pushing the Amazon into becoming a much drier ecosystem.

The team of scientists acknowledges the large degree of uncertainty in the findings of the study due to lack of data from parts of the Amazon especially from its river systems, and its unique features of creating its own climate.

However, despite the constraints, the findings presented by the study are resounding results that the Amazon is releasing more heat-trapping gasses than what it can store creating a net warming effect on the planet's atmosphere.