Stunning new research by a group of more than thirty scientists suggests that the Amazon basin could become a net contribution to global warming in the next few years and not cool down, if not already done.
The profound impact of the Amazon basin on the world climate has previously earned it the glorious title ‘the lungs of the earth’, but decades of veld fires, subsequent drought and land clearing, under the umbrella term ‘deforestation’, have devastated the region arranged. .
According to a recent study, the Amazon Basin of approximately 7,000,000 square kilometers now emits more greenhouse gases than it stores in its plants and soils, which means that it may be a net contributor to the heating, not the cooling, of the planet.
In other words, humanity can no longer rely on the so-called “Lungs of the earth” to clean the air and compensate for the emissions of burning fossil fuels.
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‘Cut [down] the forest pays attention to its carbon uptake; it is a problem, “ ecologist and lead author Kristofer Covey told Skidmore College in New York.
“But if you start looking at these other factors along with CO2, it’s really hard to see how the net effect is not that the Amazon as a whole is warming the world climate.”
By all accounts, the vast area belonging to nine South American countries could turn from a carbon bowl to an atmospheric carbon source, according to some estimates.
The Amazon Basin currently emits more gases than it naturally absorbs, and not only carbon dioxide (CO2) but also nitric oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) which break down faster in the atmosphere but up to 300 times more heat per molecule while floating in the air.
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The repeated, prolonged droughts of the area reduce the basin’s ability to capture and trap CO2, while increasing the likelihood and eventual spread of veld fires as they occur, further exacerbating the problem in a negative feedback loop.
The research team freely admits that there is a great deal of uncertainty in their results due to a lack of information from certain parts of the Amazon Basin that boast their own microclimates, but which are almost impossible to achieve and analyze to the same extent as the sections covered in the study.
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