The Amazon, one of the world's most important climate systems, is not doing well.

In an article in the scientific journal "Climate Change Now", an international group of researchers sounds the alarm.

Between 2010 and 2019, the Amazon leaked 16.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide while storing only 13.9 billion tons.

According to the study, which was done using satellite images, this means that the Amazon has leaked 20 percent more CO2 in the last decade than what was bound in trees and soil.

In the long run, this can lead to the rainforest ceasing to be a rainforest.

"We suspected that this had happened, but this is the first time we have figures that the Brazilian Amazon has reached a threshold and is now a source of carbon dioxide emissions," co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron, of the French agricultural institute INRA, told AFP. 

Dry periods longer in the rainforest

The Amazon binds a quarter of all coal in the world.

It produces 20 percent of all oxygen in the world.

But scientists have long warned that the vast rainforest is slowly turning from jungle to savannah.

The dry periods are getting longer as global warming progresses.

The devastation of rainforest also helps to create larger open dry areas.

The report in "Climate Change Now" is a sign that the fears are coming true.

- With the drought and heat, the forest is transformed into a cemetery with dried cuttings and young trees, those that one day would have grown up to tall trees, the Brazilian researcher David Lapola tells SVT.

He is a leading researcher on how forest ecosystems are affected by climate change. 

- We see how Amazon's ability to store carbon dioxide has halved in the last 30 years. 

The forest is wetter than the river

In the long run, the Amazon could be hit by rainforest death and become a savannah.

According to a well-publicized study from 2018, the breaking point is reached when 25 percent of the Amazon has been harvested.

It is not far away, right now it is estimated that 15-17 percent have been felled.

Studies show that trees feel worse and recover more slowly after dry periods and fires.

The proportion of trees that thrive in dry forests is increasing and they are replacing trees that require moist environments to thrive.  

The Amazon's ingenious system with circulation of moisture and rain means that the forest produces more than half of its own precipitation.

The amount of water could fill eight million Olympic swimming pools every day.

This is a relatively new discovery called the "river in the sky".

The amount of moisture over the Amazon contains more water is the Amazon River and is the reason why it is called rainforest.

The dehydration of the Amazon will have consequences for precipitation patterns as far away as Africa and North America.

When the "river in the sky" is gone, agriculture and cities will suffer major problems as the supply of fresh water is drastically reduced.