Potential Climate Change Impacts
Brazil’s Government considers that, despite many studies, there is still much uncertainty about the consequences of climate change and its links to worsening critical events. On the other hand, the Technical Summary of the Fourth Assessment Report of the UNFCC, reflecting a consensus view, indicates a potential Amazon forest loss of between 20 and 80% as a result of climate impacts induced by a temperature increase in the basin of between 2.0 and 3.0 degrees Celsius. The IPCC is also indicating a likelihood of major biodiversity extinctions as a consequence. Specifically, according to the Earth Simulator, temperature increases and disruption in precipitation cycles (up to a 90% reduction by the end of the century) could seriously hamper the workings of the Amazon as a forest ecosystem, reducing its capacity to retain carbon, increasing its soil temperature, and eventually forcing the Amazon through a gradual process of savannization. These predictions were reinforced in 2005, when large sections of southwestern Amazonia experienced one of the most intense droughts of the last hundred years. The drought severely affected human population along the main channel of the Amazon River and its western and southwestern tributaries.
Read more about this topic: Water Resources Management In Brazil
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