Quantifying the safe operating space for the Amazon rainforest under climate change and deforestation

TL;DR

This study quantifies the combined effects of climate change and deforestation on the Amazon rainforest's resilience, highlighting that current conditions may already threaten its stability and emphasizing the urgency for climate action and conservation.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon considering climate change and deforestation, incorporating adaptive capacities and moisture recycling.

Findings

Over a third of the Amazon is at high risk under current conditions.

The Amazon may have already exited its safe operating space.

Projected deforestation patterns could be especially harmful.

Abstract

The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the core tipping elements in the climate system with a potential tipping point from rainforest to savannah between 2 and 6 {\deg}C of global warming. However, ongoing deforestation constitutes an additional major threat to the Amazon rainforest that acts simultaneously to undermine the stability of the rainforest. Both effects could synergistically compound and lower the overall threshold in global warming and deforestation when tipping points may be crossed. Here, we quantify the safe operating space of the Amazon rainforest, which we define as the joint global warming and deforestation conditions where resilience of the system as a whole is preserved. Based on the underlying environmental data from a global climate model, we use a reduced complexity model and explicitly take into account the adaptive capacities of the forest as well as the atmospheric moisture recycling. We quantify that under current conditions of around 1.4 {\deg}C of global warming and around 17 % of deforestation, more than a third of the Amazon rainforest is at high risk of crossing critical thresholds. We therefore conclude that the Amazon rainforest may have already left its safe operating space. Furthermore, we find that the historic and projected deforestation pattern could be particularly detrimental. Our results support the need for ambitious climate action to hold the Paris climate target and also nature protection to end net deforestation.