Climate extremes in the Amazon directly affect Tibet

Climate extremes that occur in the Amazon rainforest directly affect those that occur on the Tibetan Plateau, according to research by scientists who established a relationship.

In more detail, they warned that the Himalayas, a region vital to securing water supplies for millions of people, was close to a potentially catastrophic ‘tipping point’.

Human-induced climate change is causing often irreversible changes to critical ecosystems and entire regions.

Among the regions particularly vulnerable to these climatic disturbances are the ice caps, which, if melted, could cause sea levels to rise by several meters, and the Amazon basin, where victims of tropical deforestation run the risk of turning into savannas, which will prevent them from fulfilling their role. carbon sinks on the planet.

But could a “tipping point” in one part of the world have a domino effect in another? And recent investigations specifically indicate that this is indeed the case.

Climate change in the Amazon Basin has implications for the Tibetan Plateau, located 20,000 km away, and Chinese, European and Israeli scientists, in an article published in the journal Nature Climate Change, at the beginning of the month.

Scientists have used global data on near-surface temperatures over the past 40 years to discover climate connections, from South America to South Africa, then the Middle East, and finally the Tibetan Plateau.

Computer simulations were then used to determine how global warming might alter those links over the long term, up to the year 2100.

From there, the scientists found that when the temperature rises in the Amazon, temperatures also increase in Tibet. Conversely, when rainfall increases in the rainforests of South America, snowfall decreases in the Himalayas, which is sometimes referred to as the “Third Pole.”