The study comes after what is the world’s largest tropical forest hit headlines over the summer, as scenes of raging wildfires fires and deforestation shocked the world.
Data suggests the carbon dioxide which has already been released into the atmosphere has likely already doomed the region to “substantial warming and drying,” which will in turn likely intensify fires, the authors said.
Changing temperature and rainfall levels in the forest could push the forest into a new low-biomass state, the researchers said. The burning would likely in turn spew large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and speed up global warming, they warned.
However, the researchers also provided a glimmer of hope. If new deforestation is avoided, net greenhouse gas emissions released by fires could be cut in half, and fires prevented from spreading to protected areas and indiginous lands, they believe. Besides, getting the levels of global greenhouse gas emissions down to almost zero may cut the risk of severe droughts, which are linked to wildfires. Up to 30 percent of the forest could be saved from being burned, and greenhouse gas emissions released by fires reduced by 56 percent.
“The other surprise was the increased vulnerability of protected forests to fire in the near future. During decades, those forests’ main protection against fire was the moist, humid microclimatic underneath the thick canopies. But with climate change, our model projects those canopies to become thinner, allowing dryness to take down that protection.”
Brando said the main limitation of the study was the challenge of projecting future deforestation rates, as policy and economic decisions across the globe can “rapidly” change them.
But he pointed out that the work did not deal with the fact there was higher than average rainfall and floods in 2009 and 2012.
“What impact would that have in diminishing the increased vulnerability of the forests to fires in the future if one would see not only an increase of extreme droughts, but also an alternation of increased severity of droughts and floods?” he asked.
He went on: “This year we had a peak of fires, burned forest areas and deforestation, but it was not a drought year. It [the study] highlights the impact of human induced fires and the need to eliminate most of those.
Professor Bruno De Faria, of Brazil’s Federal Institute of Technology North of Minas Gerais, told Newsweek: “the article looks only until 2050 and we know that the biggest changes are likely to occur after 2050.”
