Global Warming

The Amazon rainforest – Carbon Sink to Carbon Factory

Forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth’s atmosphere, making them a key part of mitigating climate change. But humans may have already rendered the world’s largest rainforest useless in — and perhaps even detrimental to — the battle against greenhouse gases, a new study finds.

According to the study, published July 14 in the journal Nature, the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more than 1.1 billion tons (1 billion metric tons) of CO2, a greenhouse gas, a year, meaning the forest is officially releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than it is removing.

The carbon balance tipped due to “large-scale human disturbances” in the Amazon ecosystem, the researchers wrote in their study, with wildfires — many deliberately set to clear land for agriculture and industry — responsible for most of the CO2 emissions from the region. These fires also reinforce a feedback loop of warming, the team found, with more greenhouse gases contributing to longer, hotter dry seasons in the Amazon, which lead to more fires and more CO2 pollution.

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