And the onset of El Niño makes it even worse. I'm very tired of bad news. I am especially tired of news of more tipping points being passed and of more positive feedback loops kicking in. Here's a recent study that has very depressing results: Droughts in the Amazon are speeding up climate change: 'Lungs of the planet' are emitting more CO2 than they capture.
Trees absorb a tenth less CO2 from the atmosphere during droughts
2010 dry spell saw forest release 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
This is as much as annual emissions of China and Russia combined
Trees may be channelling more limited energy reserves into growth
The picture gets more grim by the day. Read on below for more.
This is a forecast of the effects of El Niño: What Does El Niño Mean for Me? You can read the rest but as far as the Amazon is concerned:
The Amazon: Northern Brazil has an opposite El Niño signal as the more densely populated south part of the country. That means a hot, dry Southern Hemisphere summer and a forest fire-fueled speedup of deforestation in the Amazon, which has about an 80 percent chance of a dry year when El Niño is in force. The forecast for drought here is already driving up world prices for coffee, sugar, and citrus.
Let's go back to the first link and get a clear picture of what has been observed so far:
Worsening droughts in the Amazon - dubbed the 'lungs of the world' - are speeding up climate change, scientists have warned.
Trees are absorbing up to a tenth less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during droughts and the forests actually emit more carbon than they capture.
I don't know about you but analogies like "lungs of the planet" freak me out! We have been warned about this since I can remember. No one pays attention to warnings. Here is more detail about the findings:
The three year study measured the growth and photosynthesis rates of trees at 13 rainforest plots of up to 500 trees across Brazil, Peru and Bolivia - comparing those affected by the strong drought of 2010 with unaffected plots.
The Amazon drought of 2010 occurred right in the middle of the study but only affected some parts of Amazonia.
Researchers found that while the rate of photosynthesis was constant among trees on plots unaffected by drought, rates on the six drought-affected plots dropped significantly - as compared with before the 2010 drought.
There was up to a trebling in some sites in numbers of trees dying in the years after the drought - making them no longer available to absorb CO2 from the air.
There are other studies that confirm these findings. Here's the conclusion:
Professor Yadvinder Malhi added: 'These plots are our canaries in the climate change coal mine. As this study demonstrates they can give us important early insight into the actual mechanisms of how these complex forests are responding to extreme climates.
'Only through painstaking monitoring, like this, can we hope to understand and realistically model and predict the two-way interactions between climate change and the biosphere.'
I can't add much. The bad news just keeps coming in. What do you think?