"The Earth's Lungs" Amazon Reaches Tipping Point After 25 Years... Shifts to Destruction Phase

Damage scale already exceeds recoverable level
Up to 47% tipping point reached by 2050

The Amazon rainforest, known as the "lungs of the Earth," is facing a critical "tipping point" by 2050 due to logging, fires, droughts, and other impacts, beyond which ecological restoration will become impossible, leading to rapid destruction, according to a new study.

On the 14th (local time), British daily The Guardian and other foreign media reported that researchers from Santa Catarina University in Brazil recently published a paper containing these findings in the scientific journal Nature. In the paper, the researchers analyzed trends of five stress factors affecting the Amazon: global warming, precipitation, seasonal rainfall intensity, dry season duration, and deforestation. The analysis showed that the damage to the Amazon has already surpassed the so-called "safe boundary," where recovery is still expected, and predicted that by 2050, 10-47% of the Amazon rainforest could reach a tipping point (a point where small changes cause large effects) and rapidly collapse.

Burning Amazon Rainforest
[Photo source=Brazil news portal G1, Yonhap News]

Previous studies estimated that the tipping point could occur if 20-25% of the Amazon rainforest was damaged by logging, but this study concluded that the scale of forest damage has already exceeded 25%. About 15% of the forest has already disappeared, 17% is damaged by human activities such as logging and fires, and an additional 38% may have been further degraded by prolonged droughts over the past decade.

Bernardo Flores, an ecologist at Santa Catarina University and the lead author of the paper, warned, "The forest is becoming weaker and more homogenized," adding, "If the tipping point is reached by 2050, we will lose control over the system," emphasizing that now is the time to issue a "red alert" for the Amazon.

The Amazon is also extremely vulnerable to fires. The dry season temperatures in the central and southern Amazon are 2 degrees Celsius higher than 40 years ago. Moreover, computer models predict that by 2050, the annual maximum temperature in the Amazon will rise by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, and the number of dry days will increase by 10 to 30 days compared to now. The researchers forecast that these environmental changes will expose the forest and local communities to potentially unbearable heat, leading to a decline in the Amazon's forest productivity and carbon storage capacity.

The destroyed state of the Amazon rainforest
[Photo by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), Yonhap News]

The paper also highlighted changes in Amazon rainfall. Since the early 1980s, the central and peripheral areas of the Amazon have been drying, while the western and eastern regions have become wetter. If these changes continue, parts of the Amazon may transform into savanna (tropical grasslands) with distinct dry and wet seasons, while the rest of the Amazon is likely to remain in a degraded state.

The researchers argued that to prevent the destruction of the Amazon, about 10% of the entire rainforest should be secured as safe zones to prevent ecological shocks, and global temperature rise should be kept within 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. More than 10% of the Earth's terrestrial species live in the Amazon. Additionally, the Amazon plays a crucial role in the Earth's ecosystem and climate by storing carbon dioxide emitted over 15-20 years and distributing rainfall across South America, earning it the nickname "lungs of the Earth."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.