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"A Historic and Devastating Drought in the Amazon Was Caused by Climate Change, Researchers Say" originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.
Select quotes:
- Climate change was the primary driver of a massive drought in the Amazon basin in 2023 and will likely cause future extreme droughts, with potentially dire consequences for global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report from World Weather Attribution.
- The Amazon basin, which extends into parts of nine countries but lies mostly in Brazil, is the single biggest land-based sink of carbon on the planet—storing up to five times the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. Its survival as an intact ecosystem is critical to stabilizing Earth’s atmosphere.
- Previous reports have shown that parts of the Amazon, mainly in the southeast—a region known as the “arc of deforestation”—has become a source of carbon, rather than a sink, because so much of the rainforest there has been felled for grazing lands and soybean fields.
Direct link to the report:
https://mcusercontent.com/854a9a3e09405d4ab19a4a9d5/files/656e65ee-3426-f756-195d-ea5678adc1bb/WWA_scientific_report_Amazon_drought.pdf
Also:
Read the full post at Inside Climate News.
