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October 24, 2019 03:30 am

Forecast Suggests Rainforest Could Stop Producing Enough Rain To Sustain Itself By 2021

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Soaring deforestation coupled with the destructive policies of Brazil's far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, could push the Amazon rainforest dangerously to an irreversible "tipping point" within two years, a prominent economist has said. After this point the rainforest would stop producing enough rain to sustain itself and start slowly degrading into a drier savannah, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, which would exacerbate global heating and disrupt weather across South America. The warning came in a policy brief published this week by Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. The report sparked controversy among climate scientists. Some believe the tipping point is still 15 to 20 years away, while others say the warning accurately reflects the danger that Bolsonaro and global heating pose to the Amazon's survival. The policy brief noted that Brazil's space research institute, INPE, reported that deforestation in August was 222% higher than in August 2018. Maintaining the current rate of increase INPE reported between January and August this year would bring the Amazon "dangerously close to the estimated tipping point as soon as 2021 beyond which the rainforest can no longer generate enough rain to sustain itself", de Bolle wrote.

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