The Amazon rainforest has already reached a crucial tipping point (rainforest to savanna transition)

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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2336521-the-amazon-rainforest-has-already-reached-a-crucial-tipping-point/

Researchers have predicted that once a certain amount of the Amazon rainforest is lost, it will no longer be able to hold the necessary moisture and generate the rainfall it needs to support itself. This would set off a chain reaction as the world’s largest rainforest transforms into a savannah incapable of regenerating itself.

When this tipping point will occur is unclear, but 2019 work found that 17 per cent of the Amazon basin’s rainforest had been lost, and an estimate from 2018 put the future threshold at about 20 to 25 per cent of combined loss and degradation.

Surging deforestation in recent years means that threshold has already been passed, finds the latest report. It says that about 20 per cent of the Amazon has been cleared and another 6 per cent highly degraded in about 35 years.

snip

In the past 20 years, rainfall in parts of the Bolivian Amazon has reduced by 17 per cent and the temperature has risen by 1.1°C. Areas of dense rainforest are becoming savannah and trees in the north of the country have stopped producing the fruits that uncontacted Indigenous groups depend on to eat, says Quintanilla.