The Amazon could trigger a cascade of global tipping points

Burnt land and smoke from fires in the Amazon rainforest in Rondonia state, Brazil. (Leonardo Carrato/Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images)

From Science Alert



Deforestation in the Amazon is nearing the point of no return, and if this ecosystem falls, it could flip from a vast carbon sink to a gushing carbon tap. Already, some climate scientists suspect the rainforest is spewing more carbon than it's absorbing.

If the Amazon crosses a critical threshold of self-resilience, a new study suggests the disaster could set off a domino effect, knocking over tipping points elsewhere in the world, too, abruptly accelerating environmental crises and causing irreparable damage to the planet.

Tipping points in the global climate system, such as collapsing ice sheets, glacier melt, forest dieback, sea level rise, and shifting monsoons, have received a lot more attention in recent years.

Each one of these switches could seriously turn up the heat on our planet, creating a 'hothouse Earth' with irreversible and catastrophic effects.

They are all connected by the global greenhouse effect, but in a climate crisis, it's uncertain in what order they will ultimately fall.

The most recent study focuses on the Amazon rainforest tipping point and some of its connections to other regional climate systems.

Using historical data from 1979 to 2019, an international team of climate researchers have drawn a link between tree loss in the Amazon and warmer temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Plugging this data into a model of the global climate system suggested the connection was closely synchronized with modern climate changes.

Periods of higher rainfall in the Amazon correlated with less precipitation in Tibet and West Antarctica.

Since 2008, snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau has been melting at a rapid rate similar to the Arctic.

The Plateau is sometimes known as Earth's third pole, and it plays important roles in global water storage and climate.

If the current study is correct, Tibet's loss of snow cover could be due, in part, to deforestation half a world away. The authors say the region is now operating close to a tipping point that tends to be overlooked.

"Our framework highlights that tipping elements can be linked and also the potential predictability of cascading tipping dynamics," the authors write.

The connection between Antarctica, Tibet, and the Amazon extends nearly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), and it appears to be based on strong ocean currents and westerly winds.

In a review of the paper for Nature, climate scientist Valerie Livina from the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory agrees that the models show "strong correlations across long distances".

"This is the first time that the theory of complex networks has been applied in the context of tipping points, and the synergy of the two research areas provides an important insight into the global climate dynamics," Livina writes.

"This work opens a new area of tipping point analysis at a global scale."

Nevertheless, there is still a lot of complexity that needs to be incorporated into future models.

Deforestation in the Amazon impacts more than just Tibet and Antarctica. Previous studies suggest the climate of the Amazon, which is closely tuned by its trees, can have impacts on coral reefs in the Caribbean and reduce snowfall in the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Mountains of North America, potentially triggering extreme drought on the west coast.

The planet's climate systems are intimately connected. It's a small world, after all.

The study was published in Nature Climate Change

Top 20 California fires

 From Dr Jonathan Foley

And 2021 isn't even on the chart yet.

Cost of extreme weather quadruples in 40 years

[And that's in inflation-adjusted terms]

 From Inside Climate News

A new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980. 

The number of extreme weather disasters has more than doubled in 40 years.

And the cost has quadrupled

[This is just a quick summary.  You can read the full article here.]

It's becoming clearer and clearer that the costs of climate change and global heating are beginning to far exceed the costs of preventing further climate change.  As global temperatures rise, the costs will rise too--exponentially.

Listen up townies

Bushfire smoke in Eden, NSW.  Source: The Guardian

The latest thing from denialists is that the Ozzie fires are caused by "greenies" not allowing burn offs.  This is comparable to Lord Cheeto's dictum that the California fires were caused because they "don't sweep the leaves off the forest floor'.  It's utter twaddle.  Anything to avoid admitting that they were wrong, that climate change is happening NOW, and is causing catastrophes.  

From a Twitter thread by Sam Connor

Listen up townies. You’re driving us nuts. Backburning is done by firefighters in a fire. Hazard reduction - ‘burn offs’, ‘controlled burns’ - is done to reduce fuel load BEFORE everything is on fire. Nobody resists it. And it’s a decision by fire control on local councils.

You just make yourselves sound ill informed when you spruik this absolute rubbish about who is making decisions about burns. Unless it’s a national park, it’s done by people from the country, in the country, of all political affiliations, in concert with each other.

It isn’t made by your ‘local greenie’ whatever that means - generally, decisions are made by the people in charge of fires in your local government authority. Including decisions about harvest bans, total fire bans, when it’s safe to burn, when you need a permit.

You’re only allowed to burn off when it’s safe. You can do it yourself (farmers set fire to stubble after cropping) or you can get your local vollies to do it. But listen, it depends on when it’s safe. If there’s a big fuel load and it’s hot and dry, then they won’t let you.

There have been many controlled burns that have gotten away from people and they have started fires.  This is not ‘arson’ but it is classified as ‘deliberately lit’.  You townies need to learn that shit too. People also light things up using machinery or angle grinders.

NONE OF THIS IS NEW. What IS new is that we have a far smaller window of opportunity to safely burn off. It used to be a far longer period of time. In Vic they did something like 30% of what they’d usually do last year because conditions. Because climate change.

The other thing is that the extended drought means everything is tinder dry. No rain means no moisture in the soil. The trees have no moisture in them. Add hot days, big fuel load, searing winds, you have a recipe for unprecedented natural disaster.

There ARE other effects that take place like fire creating their own weather systems and lightning and more fires and also a thing that’s related to no trees and lots of cleared areas but I’m pretty sure they’re too complicated for people who can’t understand ‘backburning’.

All these nasty little insinuations by people about around #ItsTheGreensFault/Greenies/ferals/badly dressed bushfire survivors/whatever aren’t evidenced by anything. Please do some reading, educate yourself or stick to saving your inner city tomato plants on your balcony.

Regards, all the pissed off people who live in bushfire regions. @ABCthedrum  can you make someone tell Australia this, I’m going mad and so is every regional person watching inner city commentary on the interwebs right now

I lived in a forest for 27 years, and I can confirm all she says.  You can't do burn-offs in mid-winter—the forest's too wet.  You can't do them is summer—it's too dry.  That leaves autumn and spring.  And in a drought year, even in autumn, the forests might be too dry.  In spring, you need careful timing.  Early on, it can still be too wet.  But it dries out very quickly.  And if there is wind, well, you have to postpone.

Here is the Green Party's statement on hazard reduction:

The Australian Greens support hazard reduction burns and backburning to reduce the impact of wildfire when guided by the best scientific, ecological and emergency service expertise. 

Attempts by right-wing pundits and politicians to place the blame on the Greens represent the worst kind of dishonest politics. The Coalition has spent six years in office ignoring the chief cause – severe climate change,

Climate change means that bushfire season is starting earlier, that forests and grasslands are drier, igniting more easily and burn more readily, and that there are more and more days of very high, severe, extreme and catastrophic fire risk. The major cause of climate change is the mining, burning and exporting of coal, oil and gas.

Leading emergency service organisations aren't just talking about fuel reduction or backburning anymore, they're talking about climate change.  The overwhelming scientific consensus is that Australia's fire season is growing longer and more intense due to the effects of climate change.

Let's deal with the real cause, shall we? CO2 and methane emissions.