Climate extremes in the Amazon impact Tibetan Plateau

PARIS: Climate extremes in the Amazon rainforest are directly affecting those in the Tibetan Plateau, scientists said on January 26 that the Himalayan region crucial for water security and human activities is nearing a potentially disastrous tipping point and scientists have said that this is pushing crucial ecosystems and whole regions towards irreversible changes.

The melting polar ice sheets could cause metres of sea-level rise, as well as the Amazon basin, where tropical forests are at risk of turning into savannah.

Can one tipping point have a domino effect on another region? Recent research shows that this is already happening.

Scientists in China, Europe and Israel reported earlier this month in Nature Climate Change, which has had a knock-on effect on the Tibetan Plateau 20,000 kilometres away.

"We've been surprised to see how strongly climate extremes in the Amazon are linked to climate extremes in Tibet," said Jurgen Kurths, co-author of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The researchers used global near-surface temperature data to map out a pathway of climate links over the last 40 years. They stretched from South America to Southern Africa, on to the Middle East and finally into the Tibetan Plateau.

In their study, the researchers used computer simulations to track how global warming might change these long-distance link-ups out to 2100.

They found that when temperatures get warmer in the Amazon, temperatures also rise in Tibet. Snowfall in the Himalayan region, sometimes called the third pole, decreases when rain increases in the South American rainforest.