Scientists have found that distant ecosystems essential to regulating the Earth's climate are more connected than previously thought. They have found a new atmospheric path that originates in the Amazon, runs along the South Atlantic, crosses East Africa and the Middle East until reaching Central Asia.

This connection, which extends for 20,000 km around the globe, indicates that the collapse of one region can destabilize the others, leading to a cascade of weather events across the planet. Fires in the Amazon and the warming of the local climate, for example, even affect the melting process of glaciers in the Himalayas and Antarctica, according to the researchers.

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, is one of the first to investigate the interaction between ecosystems at risk of reaching a climate inflection point, which is a stage of no return, with irreversible transformations.

"Tipping cascades are a risk that must be taken seriously," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the report. "Interlinked tipping elements in the terrestrial system can trigger each other, with potentially serious consequences."

The Bloomberg report points out that gaining this kind of knowledge is essential to understanding the full impact of global warming, which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions and is already raising sea levels and causing more severe floods, droughts and forest fires on all continents.

Source: Um só Planeta