The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Humanity’s Chance to Reverse Amazon’s Slide Toward Tipping Point Is ‘Shrinking’
Dear Diary. I keep emphasizing year after year and post after post that the main climate item to look at for our future is the Amazon. The entire planet should be helping Brazil and other countries within the Amazon conserve what many have described as the “lungs of the Earth.” In my opinion I don’t see enough signs that the Amazon won’t be tipped towards a net carbon emitter despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s and native Brazilians’ efforts. I keep seeing these types of reports cementing my thoughts:
So, sadly as 2025 begins, I think that our climate will spiral out of control because collectively we did not stymie carbon pollution and conserve vast rainforests in the past.
Others think that there is still hope to save the Amazon and our climate. For more on that, here is a recent Common Dreams article:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/amazon-rainforest-tipping-point-2024
This aerial view shows Amazon forest degradation in the Menkragnoti Indigenous Territory in Altamira, Pará state, Brazil, on August 28, 2019. (Photo: Joao Laet/AFP/Getty Images)
Humanity’s Chance to Reverse Amazon’s Slide Toward Tipping Point Is ‘Shrinking’
The world’s largest rainforest showed “ominous indicators,” including wildfires and extreme drought, in 2024.
Dec 31, 2024
The Amazon, sometimes called the “lungs of the planet,” this year showed signs of further inching toward a much-feared tipping point, threatening the very existence of the world’s largest rainforest.
Rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaged large parts of the Amazon in 2024. The fires and dry conditions were fueled by deforestation and the El Niño weather pattern, and also made worse by climate change, according to the World Economic Forum. “The number of fires reached its highest level in 14 years this September,” the group reported in October.
Drought has also impacted the Amazon River, causing one of the river’s main tributaries to drop to its lowest level ever recorded, according to October reporting from The Associated Press. The drop in the river has negatively impacted local economies and food supplies.
Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, told the AP last week that the fires and droughts experienced across the Amazon in 2024 “could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point.”
“Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open,” he said.
The Amazon plays a vital role in keeping the planet healthy. 150-200 billion tons of carbon are stored in the Amazon, and it also carries 20% of the earth’s fresh water to sea.
According to the World Economic Forum, if the Amazon tipping point is reached, “it will release billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through fires and plants dying off. This would further exacerbate climate change and make the 1.5°C goal impossible to achieve. It would also alter weather patterns, which would impact agricultural productivity and global food supplies.”
A paper published in the journal Nature in February indicates that up to half of the rainforest could hit a tipping point by the middle of the century. “We estimate that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests will be exposed to compounding disturbances that may trigger unexpected ecosystem transitions and potentially exacerbate regional climate change,” explained the researchers behind the paper.
However, it wasn’t all bad news out of the Amazon in 2024. According to the AP, the amount of deforestation in Brazil and Colombia declined in this year. In Brazil, which houses the largest chunk of the Amazon, forest loss dropped 30.6% compared to the year prior, bringing it to the lowest level of destruction in nearly a decade.
The improvement is an about-face from a couple of years ago, when the country registered 15-year high of deforestation during the leadership of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil is now led by the left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who—despite presiding over this drop in deforestation—has also come under scrutiny, as AP noted, by environmentalist for backing projects that they argue could harm the environment.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is some brand new 2024 climatology. Reports are archived on prior January 2025 posts:
Here is More Climate News from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)