The South American monsoon approaches a critical transition in response to deforestation
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The Amazon rainforest is threatened by land-use change and increasing drought and fire frequency. Studies suggest an abrupt dieback of large parts of the rainforest after partial forest loss, but the critical threshold, underlying mechanisms, and possible impacts of forest degradation on the monsoon circulation remain uncertain. Here, we use a nonlinear dynamical model of the moisture transport and recycling across the Amazon to identify several precursor signals for a critical transition in the coupled atmosphere-vegetation dynamics. Guided by our simulations, we reveal both statistical and physical precursor signals of an approaching critical transition in reanalysis and observational data. In accordance with our model results, we attribute these characteristic precursor signals to the nearing of a critical transition of the coupled Amazon atmosphere-vegetation system induced by forest loss due to deforestation, droughts, and fires. The transition would lead to substantially drier conditions, under which the rainforest could likely not be maintained.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | eadd9973 |
| Tidsskrift | Science Advances |
| Vol/bind | 9 |
| Udgave nummer | 40 |
| Antal sider | 13 |
| ISSN | 2375-2548 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2023 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
Acknowledgments Funding:N.Boe.acknowledgesfundingbytheVolkswagenFoundation.ThisisTiPES contribution#111;the TiPES (TippingPoints in theEarth System) project has receivedfunding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 820970. N.Boe. acknowledges further funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020researchandinnovationprogrammeundertheMarieSklodowska-Curiegrantagreement no.956170.Authorcontributions:N.Boe.conceivedthestudy.N.Boc.performedtheanalysis. Bothauthorsdiscussedandinterpretedresults.N.Boc.wrotethepaperwithcontributionsfrom N.Boe.Competinginterests:Theauthorsdeclarethattheyhavenocompetinginterests.Data andmaterialsavailability:Alldataneededtoevaluatetheconclusionsinthepaperare presentinthepaperand/ortheSupplementaryMaterials.Themeteorologicaldataarepublicly available.TheERA5reanalysis(59)canbedownloadedfromhttps://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/. TheCHIRPSprecipitationdataset(81)canbedownloadedfromwww.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps. TheGPCCprecipitationdatasetisavailableatwww.psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.gpcc.html (78).TheGPCPdatasetisavailableathttps://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.gpcp.html(82).All codeusedfortheanalysisandthemodelisavailableonZenodoatwww.doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.8121629andonGitHubathttps://github.com/NilsBochow/SAMS-critical-transition.
Funding Information:
N.Boe. acknowledges funding by the Volkswagen Foundation. This is TiPES contribution #111; the TiPES (Tipping Points in the Earth System) project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 820970. N.Boe. acknowledges further funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 956170.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 The Authors, some rights reserved.
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