Seems strange that a rain forest could be devastated by drought, doesn't it? Well, it happened to the Amazon rainforest in 2005. Global warming may have been a factor, and scientists are trying to figure out what that could mean for the future.
Some excerpts from the BBC story:
There was broad consensus that the 2005 drought was linked not to El Nino - the periodic phenomenon which begins with a warming of waters in the Pacific - as with most previous droughts in the Amazon, but to warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.
Peter Cox, professor in climate change dynamics at the University of Essex in the UK, thinks the same factors which caused the drought are likely to be repeated.
What drives it, he says, is the warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in the Tropics relative to the South - this causes less rain to fall.
'Forest dieback'
So how often could such droughts happen?
The Hadley Centre climate change model predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.
We can't say for sure that any individual drought (...) is caused by global warming - but we can say the probability of such an event will increase as a result of human-induced climate change
Professor Peter Cox"We can't say for sure that any individual drought such as the one in 2005 is caused by global warming," says Mr Cox.
"But we can say the probability of such an event will increase as a result of human-induced climate change and could be very common indeed by the end of the century." ...
The more alarming predictions for the Amazon say the combination of forest fires, drought, deforestation, changes in land use (such as soya production) and global warming will combine to push the Amazon over a "tipping point" into a cycle of destruction.
Scientists at the conference were keen to stress they do not know the risk of this occurring, but talked instead of "corridors of probability".
There is disagreement over these corridors.
"The Hadley Centre model predicts it is very likely indeed that the Amazon will be severely impacted by climate change over the next few decades," says Professor Cox.
"But if you take all the models, then maybe a 10 to 40% probability is more defensible."
But however low the probability, changes to the Amazon are likely to be a "high impact" event on the world's climate.
As one conference speaker pointed out: "You wouldn't get on a plane if you knew there was a 10% chance of it crashing."
