The Amazon rainforest has already lost one third of its resilience and may be past the point of no return.
Warming and deforestation have combined to push 35% of the Amazon into a state of permanent decline. Environmentalists often talk about a future tipping point that the world must work to avoid. Satellite data and ground observations confirm that for a massive portion of the biome, the process of collapse is already happening right now. The synergy of rising temperatures and clear-cutting has stripped the forest of its ability to recover from stress. This transition suggests that local communities will face a rapidly changing environment much sooner than global models predicted.
Quantifying the safe operating space for the Amazon rainforest under climate change and deforestation
arXiv · 2604.27681
The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the core tipping elements in the climate system with a potential tipping point from rainforest to savannah between 2 and 6 °C of global warming. However, ongoing deforestation constitutes an additional major threat to the Amazon rainforest that acts simultaneously to undermine the stability of the rainforest. Both effects could synergistically compound and lower the overall threshold in global warming and deforestation when tipping points may be crossed