A year ago, Carlos Nobre, one of Brazil’s top climate scientists, was a rare voice of optimism about the future of the planet.
The 73-year-old, one of the top experts on the Amazon rainforest, was cheering the fact that “for the first time, all the leaders in the region are mobilized to find solutions for the forest” at a summit in northern Brazil.
Today, he warns that the world’s biggest jungle, which is being ravaged by the worst drought-fueled wildfires in decades, is in existential danger.
The world risks “losing the Amazon,” he told AFP in an interview.
A record wave of wildfires, fueled by severe drought linked to climate change and deforestation, is causing havoc across South America.
In the Amazon, most of the fires are illegally started by humans for agricultural purposes.
“The criminals realized that satellites only detect fires when the fire spreads to 30 or 40 square meters (320 to 430 square feet).
“This gives them time to leave the area before being arrested,” Nobre said.
In February, Europe’s climate monitor Copernicus announced that for the first time on record, Earth had endured 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial era—four years earlier than predicted.
“It is not a slow, linear increase,” Nobre said.
“In 2024 we are already seeing how the frequency of extreme phenomena is accelerating and breaking records,” he added, citing increased “heat waves, heavy rains, droughts, forest fires” among the extreme weather events that have become frequent in some parts of the planet.
Nobre warned that the fires consuming chunks of the Amazon risked accelerating its transition into dry savannah grasslands.
“If global warming continues and we do not completely stop deforestation, degradation and fires, by 2050 we will have passed the point of no return,” he warned.
“In 30 to 50 years, we will have lost at least 50 percent of the forest,” he said.
An increase in warming to 2.5˚C by 2050 would trigger new tipping points, he said, including “losing the Amazon” outright.”