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Climate Brief:We are "Perilously close to the Point of No Return" on Amazon Rain Forests [1]
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Date: 2025-06-27
‘We are perilously close to the point of no return’: climate scientist on Amazon rainforest’s future. For more than three decades, Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre has warned that deforestation of the Amazon could push this globally important ecosystem past the point of no return. Working first at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and more recently at the University of São Paulo, he is a global authority on tropical forests and how they could be restored. In this interview, he explains the triple threat posed by the climate crisis, agribusiness and organised crime.
"You were the first scientist to warn that it could hit a tipping point. What does that mean?
It is a threshold beyond which the rainforest will undergo an irreversible transformation into a degraded savannah with sparse shrubby plant cover and low biodiversity. This change would have dire consequences for local people, regional weather patterns and the global climate.
At what level will the Amazon hit a tipping point?
We estimate that a tipping point could be reached if deforestation reaches 20-25% or global heating rises to 2.0-2.5C [above preindustrial levels].
What is the situation today?
It is very, very serious. Today, 18% of the Amazon has been cleared and the world has warmed by 1.5C and is on course to reach 2.0-2.5C by 2050.
How is this being felt now?
The rainforest suffered record droughts in 2023 and 2024, when many of the world’s biggest rivers were below the lowest point on record. That was the fourth severe drought in two decades, four times more than would have been expected in an undisrupted climate.
Every year, the dry season is becoming longer and more arid. Forty-five years ago, the annual dry season in the southern Amazon used to last three to four months and even then there would be some rain. But today, it is four to five weeks longer and there is 20% less rain. If this trend continues, we will reach a point of no return in two or three decades. Once the dry season extends to six months, there is no way to avoid self-degradation. We are perilously close to a point of no return. In some areas, it may have already been passed. In southern Pará and northern Mato Grosso, the minimum rainfall is already less than 40mm per month during the dry season.
Read more: guardian
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