UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Deforestation-induced drying lowers Amazon climate threshold

Identification

Public canonical key

radar:r-2f6792f0deaa01b7442e043a8568ebbb

Authors

Nico Wunderling · Boris Sakschewski · Johan Rockström · Bernardo M. Flores · Marina Hirota · Arie Staal

Reported year

2026

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-14T02:00:15.457317+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-14T02:00:15.457317+00:00

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Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Goethe University Frankfurt · Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt/M · Leibniz Association · Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research · Stockholm Resilience Centre · Stockholm University · University of Potsdam · Universidade de Santiago de Compostela · Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina · Utrecht University

Reported affiliation countries

BR · DE · ES · NL · SE

Documentary abstract — original language

Abstract Humanity is putting unprecedented pressures on the Amazon forest system through global warming and land use changes 1,2 . As the Amazon forest may undergo self-reinforcing transitions, these pressures could lead to system-wide changes across major parts of Amazonian ecosystems 1–4 . Here we apply a dynamical systems model to assess the local and far-reaching cascading transition risks towards degraded ecosystems in the Amazon biome under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. For these emission scenarios, we constructed how moisture is transported through the atmosphere within the Amazon basin using an established atmospheric moisture-tracking model 5 . Without accounting for deforestation, we find a critical global warming threshold of 3.7–4.0 °C, beyond which up to a third of the Amazon forest risks losing stability. However, when considering deforestation, we find a near system-wide transition of the Amazon forest (62−77% of the area) under the combination of a lower threshold range of global warming of 1.5–1.9 °C and deforestation of 22–28%. The large majority of the simulated transitions is caused by spatial knock-on effects from increasing drought intensities, leading to long-ranging and self-propelling cascades on scales of hundreds to thousands of kilometres. Overall, our results reinforce the need to keep global warming levels below 1.5 °C and halt deforestation, as well as ecologically restore degraded forests to avoid high transition risks across the Amazon forest system.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

https://openalex.org/W7160440433

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-10456-0

PMID

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42092145

PMCID

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/13233621

Documentary context

Documentary family

article

Source-reported types

article

Publishers

Nature Portfolio

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1

• Document · https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10456-0

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Relevance pending

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