Climate change favored drought in the Amazon in 2023, according to a study

He climate change greatly favored the devastating drought that hit the Amazonone of the most important ecosystems in the world, to stabilize the global climate, threatened by the global warming.

That historic drought, between June and November 2023, affected millions of people throughout the Amazon basin, fueling enormous forest fires, causing the main water courses to shrink and wreaking havoc on fauna.

Some experts had pointed out that this phenomenon could be due to the arrival of the El Niño meteorological episode, but a new study carried out by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA), published on Wednesday, indicates that climate change caused by atmospheric pollution was the main cause. responsible.

According to them, global warming made drought 30 times more likely and they warned that the situation will worsen as the planet warms, pushing the Amazon to a “inflection point” climate.

If drought intensifies and temperatures rise in the Amazon, an accelerated transition from tropical forest to savanna could occur, which would reduce its carbon storage capacity, experts said.

It is estimated that the Amazon can store more than 100,000 million tons of carbon, that is, more than double annual emissions.

“If we allow human-made emissions and deforestation to pass the tipping point, large amounts of carbon dioxide will be released and our fight against climate change will become even more complicated”, warned Regina Rodrigues, professor of Physical and Climate Oceanography at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil.

The scientists compared the current climate – which has seen a temperature increase of approximately 1.2ºC since the pre-industrial era – with the situation before climate change.

Thus, they found that global warming multiplied the probability of weak rainfall by 10 and the probability of drought by 30.

Currently, drought only occurs once every 50 years, but with a warming of 2ºC, the Amazon would suffer this type of episode approximately every 13 years, according to scientists.