The devastation of the Amazon in Brazil has reached new record levels, according to data from the country's national space research center INPE, writes Reuters.

During the first two months of the year, three times as much rainforest was cleared in Brazil as in the same period in 2021.

In January, an area as large as seven Manhattan (430 square kilometers) was deforested.

February followed the same gloomy pattern, when 199 square kilometers of rainforest were devastated - 62 percent more than the same month last year.

The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest and has an important role to play in the fight against climate change, as it absorbs and stores carbon dioxide.

Transformed into savannah

A study published in Nature Climate Change in March this year, shows that devastation, together with climate change, leads the Amazon towards a so-called tipping point, where the ecosystem is unable to recover.

This risks leading to the forest drying out and turning into savannah.

The process would emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases and disrupt the entire planet's rain system.

- The rainforest is important for stabilizing our global climate system, it regulates the water in the atomic atmosphere.

If it tips over to the savannah, we will have a completely new climate on earth, says Ingo Fetzer, who, among other things, researches planetary systems and borders at Stockholm University.

"We can not run that experiment"

The study is based on a comprehensive analysis of new satellite measurements of the Amazon.

Over the past two decades, measurements show that about 75 percent of the rainforest has a reduced ability to recover, from, for example, drought or fires.

- We see that it is approaching a tipping point.

It has happened before, several thousand years ago, so we know it can happen.

But we do not know when.

And we can not run this experiment, because once it's tipped, we can not come back.

Then we lose both the current stability of the climate and a large part of our biological diversity, says Ingo Fetzer.

More devastation is expected

Since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, deforestation in the Amazon has increased dramatically.

It is now predicted that the devastation will increase even more until the election in October this year, as it usually does during election years in Brazil.

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Researchers warn: Amazon leaks more carbon dioxide than it binds.

Photo: SVT