Amazon scientists simulate how warming may impact jungle

MANAUS, Brazil – Deep in the Amazon, an experiment unfolds that may allow a peek into the future to see what will happen to the world’s largest rainforest when carbon dioxide (CO2) levels rise.

It is a simulation to see how the lungs of the world will endure global warming.

The AmazonFace project, co-financed by Brazil and Britain, is “an open-air laboratory that will allow us to understand how the rainforest will behave in future climate change scenarios”, said Dr Carlos Quesada, one of the project coordinators.

Dr Quesada stands at the foot of a soaring metal tower that protrudes through the rainforest canopy at a site 80km north of Manaus in north-west Brazil.

Sixteen other towers arranged in a circle around it will “pump” CO2 into the ring, replicating levels that may happen with global warming.

“How will the rainforest react to the rising temperature, the reduction in water availability, in a world with more carbon in the atmosphere?“ said Dr Quesada, a researcher at an Amazon research institute that is part of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

The technology known as free-air CO2 enrichment, or Face, has already been used to study the impact on forests in Australia, the United States and Britain, but never in a tropical rainforest.

By 2024, there will be six “carbon rings” pumping CO2 – one of the causes of global warming – at a concentration 40 per cent to 50 per cent higher than today.

Over a decade, researchers will analyse the processes occurring in leaves, roots, soil, water and nutrient cycles.

“We will have more accurate projections on how the Amazon rainforest can help combat climate change with its ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Also, it will help us understand how the rainforest will be impacted by these changes,” said Dr David Lapola, a researcher at the University of Campinas, who coordinates the project with Dr Quesada.

The carbon increase in the atmosphere may lead to creation of grassy plains, or savannah, where Amazon rainforest once flourished, with vegetation better adapted to higher temperatures and longer droughts.

But CO2 could also “fertilise” the forest and make it temporarily more resistant to these changes.

“This is a positive scenario, at least for a short time, a period for us to get to zero-emission policies, to keep temperature increases to only 1.5 deg C,” Dr Quesada said.

The project “is a window to the future”, he added. “You open the window and look at what might be happening 30 years ahead.”

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urged ambitious action to counter global warming again in 2023.

According to its latest March report, global warming

will surpass 1.5 deg C

in the decades after 2030, leading to irreversible loss of ecosystems.

Coinciding with global warming is the impact of

human-caused deforestation in the Amazon.

A landmark 2018 study by scientists Thomas Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre found that the Amazon is hurtling towards a tipping point where savannahs begin to replace rainforest.

They said that will happen with deforestation of 20 per cent to 25 per cent of Amazon territory. Currently, deforestation stands at 15 per cent.

AmazonFace, coordinated by the University of Campinas and the Science and Technology Ministry, has the support of the British Foreign Office and the British Meteorological Service.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visited the facilities this week and announced a new contribution of £2 million (S$3.3 million) to the project, which since 2021 has already received £7.3 million from Britain.

Brazil, for its part, has invested 32 million Reals (S$8.7 million). AFP