Amazon jungle may be ruined by drought
By Ben Cubby, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2009
HUGE swathes of the Amazon jungle could be destroyed by drought this century, even if nations make a massive effort to slow down global warming, according to a paper presented at a conference on climate science in Denmark yesterday.
The report, from the British Meteorological Office, was one of many delivered at the Copenhagen conference that carry grim predictions of the scale and speed of climate change.
Australian researchers joined hundreds from around the world to present their latest findings, which update and in most cases confirm some of the more bleak projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
The Amazon report used computer models to calculate the effects of rising temperatures on the rainforest and found that if temperatures rose by 2 degrees by the middle of the century - considered a conservative prediction - between 20 and 40 per cent of the rainforest would die. If temperatures rose by 3 degrees, three-quarters of the forest would die and transform into grassland.
"On any kind of pragmatic time-scale, I think we should see the loss of the Amazon forest as irreversible," Dr Chris Jones, a lead researcher at the meteorological office's Hadley Centre, told the conference.
The study, due for publication in the journal Nature Geoscience, was the first to measure the expected loss of trees in the Amazon as a result of climate change. The forest contains about 10 per cent of the world's land-based carbon sinks, and earlier studies have shown changes there would affect the earth's climate.
Another paper, presented by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, outlined the feasibility of a chain of massive solar power plants in the Sahara Desert which, coupled with wind farms, could supply all of Europe's electricity needs.
The four-day conference, which will conclude today, is being hosted by the University of Copenhagen to put the latest climate and energy science in the public domain as governments grapple with their own responses to climate change.
Later this year Australian negotiators will travel to the Danish capital to take part in talks which may result in a global deal to lower emissions.
The Federal Government has said it will cut Australia's emissions by at least 5 per cent by 2020, mainly by deploying a carbon trading scheme, and by 60 per cent by 2050.
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