According to a study from the rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, about 20% of the atmosphere has entered the atmosphere in the last decade from what can be absorbed by the planet’s so-called green lungs. Thursday in Nature Climate Change. Published study Comparing the amount of carbon dioxide the forest absorbs to the carbon dioxide released by cutting, burning and destroying.
Co-author Jean-Pierre Winner of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) said the figures showed for the first time that “the Brazilian Amazon has been upended and is now a net emitter.” “We don’t know at what point this change will become irreversible.”
According to the study, the Amazon Basin absorbed about 13.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2019, but emitted 16.6 billion tons of it. The study also shows the increasing destruction of the forest due to fires and lumberjacks. Deforestation increased nearly four times in 2019 compared to previous years, from about 1 million hectares to 3.9 million – an area the size of Holland.
Researchers also see a reason for this in politics. After the right-wing president took office Jair Bolsonaro In January 2019 there was one Significant weakening of environmental protection measures He said in one Communications from Inra.
Healthy ecosystems play a critical role in combating climate change and increasing carbon dioxide emissions, which reached more than 40 billion tons in 2019. Over the past 50 years, plants and soil have absorbed about 30 percent of these emissions, and the oceans more than 20 percent . Tropical rain forests absorb an especially large amount of carbon dioxide, and about half of these forests are located in the Amazon Basin.