Planetary Effects
The Amazon is a set of diverse ecosystems covering a large part of South America. It includes the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation and the worsening impacts of the climate emergency, particularly on local water cycles, are damaging these habitats. This damage could be enough for ecosystems to start to permanently shrink.
The Amazon rainforest creates its own rainfall and cools itself; it’s a self-sustaining local ecosystem. Although rising concentrations of carbon dioxide will encourage more trees to grow, the loss of trees through deforestation, wildfires and dryer conditions disrupts this delicate ecosystem, and may even cause it to collapse. Deforestation has reduced the rainforest by about 18% since 1970. It is estimated that widespread dieback could occur if 20-25% of the rainforest is lost.
The Amazon is home to half of the world’s remaining rainforest, a tenth of known species, and millions of Indigenous Peoples. It is culturally and ecologically important on its own terms, and also stores a large amount of carbon, meaning it plays an important role in the global climate system. The health of the Amazon is inseparable from the health of the whole planet.
Climate change damages the rainforest by making it dryer and has caused severe and unprecedented droughts in recent years. Dryer conditions also create wildfires.
Increasing warming and loss of local rainfall, combined with ongoing deforestation could lead to ecosystems in the area failing to sustain themselves, and start to dieback.
But eliminating human-caused greenhouse gas emissions will help slow global heating and the rising temperatures in the area. We also need to stop deforestation, and support local communities, including Indigenous Communities, to protect and work with the land to help it to recover.
Learn More
Has the Amazon Reached Its ‘Tipping Point’? (New York Times)
Dieback: how deforestation and climate change could push the Amazon to a tipping point (Climate Tipping Points)
Amazon factsheet (WWF)
Could climate change and deforestation spark Amazon ‘dieback’? (Carbon Brief)
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The polar ice caps are melting because of global temperature rises caused by the climate emergency. The Arctic ocean naturally freezes and thaws based on the seasons. However, higher temperatures are disrupting this cycle, leading to around a 13% permanent loss of Arctic sea ice every decade.
This sets off a feedback loop. Melting ice reduces white surfaces in the Arctic that should reflect the Sun’s heat. Instead the heat is absorbed by the darker ocean surface uncovered underneath. This drives up the local temperature, melting more ice, and so on. The ocean also expands as it heats up, causing rising sea levels. This makes the Arctic extremely sensitive to the climate emergency. It is now warming four times faster than the rest of the world.
Loss of Arctic sea ice also drives coastal erosion, impacting communities and ecosystems in the region. It robs animals of habitats, such as polar bears, who use the ice for hunting and travel. It is also opening up more access to Arctic waters by humans, which is increasing tourism, shipping, fossil fuel extraction, and militarization, all of which could make the situation worse.
A melting Arctic can impact ocean circulations and wind currents that are important for the stability of weather around the world. For example, the jet stream — winds which move west to east — is being weakened by these changes, pushing warmer air into the Arctic and colder air down south. This further drives warming in the Arctic. A warmer Arctic is also melting ice sheets, including the Greenland ice sheet, which are rising sea levels globally.
Further melting can only be prevented if global temperature rises stop.
Learn More
What are the impacts of Arctic sea ice loss? (National Snow and Ice Data Center)
▶️ Annual Arctic Sea Ice Minimum 1979-2022 (NASA, YouTube)
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Get involved with groups and campaigns to protect the Arctic, such as:
Learn from and support groups representing indigenous communities in the Arctic regions
Desertification doesn’t just mean deserts expanding. Land across the water-scarce parts of the world — or drylands — is being degraded. This means there are declines in the quality and availability of the soil, water, and plants and other wildlife in these places.
Desertification is caused by the poor management of land and the unsustainable use of freshwater. Together, these damage soils and make the land less able to support crops and animals. Drylands are particularly vulnerable to desertification as they already have low rainfall and poor soil fertility.
Drylands are home to around 2.7 billion people. They cover over 40% of the planet and are mostly found in the Majority World.
Desertification is being made worse by the climate emergency. Drylands are warming at twice the global average. Rising temperatures are disrupting rainfall patterns and droughts are increasing, worsening water scarcity. This can reduce vegetation growth, making the soil bare, which increases the chance it is eroded by wind or water, when the rains do come. These worsening extremes are often too much for people and nature to cope with. This can push people to farm in even less suitable places, worsening soil erosion.
Dryland restoration can protect against desertification. Increasing vegetation can protect soils, as well as store greenhouse gas emissions. Indigenous governance and traditional practices — perfected over generations — are crucial to fighting desertification.
Learn More
Drylands and climate change (International Union for Conservation of Nature)
The IPCC’s special report on climate change and land (Carbon Brief)
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Oceans naturally absorb carbon dioxide. A byproduct of this process is that sea water can become more acidic. The huge increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution has meant that oceans are now becoming dangerous for sea life.
The entire planet is now affected by ocean acidification. Oceans have become around 30% more acidic in the last 200 years, something which hasn’t happened in millions of years.
Many sea species are negatively impacted by acidification. It damages the growth of creatures with shells and impairs the ability of some fish to hunt and find a home. Along with warmer water, acidification is a major cause of the destruction of coral reefs, which could soon collapse globally. Scientists don’t understand the ocean well enough to be able to rule out similar collapses of other delicate marine ecosystems. Acidification is a threat to billions of people worldwide who are dependent on a healthy ocean for their food, culture, and livelihoods.
Acidification will continue to increase until carbon dioxide emissions are decreased. Meanwhile, the more carbon dioxide the oceans contain, the less they can subsequently absorb. This means that the proportion of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions entering the oceans is decreasing, leaving more to enter the atmosphere, worsening the climate emergency.
Learn More
Ocean acidification (NOAA)
Coral reef die-off (Carbon Brief)
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Support Indigenous communities who steward so much of the biodiversity in oceans.
Get involved with groups and projects that focus on ocean acidification, such as:
Permafrost is continuously frozen ground, soil, rocks, and sand, held together by ice. It’s mainly found in the polar regions. As global temperatures rise, the permafrost is starting to thaw. This is happening across the planet, including around the whole of the Arctic.
As the ice inside permafrost melts, the ground can become unstable. This has caused damage to buildings and infrastructure built in permafrost regions. It has destroyed sites of great cultural importance to Arctic communities. Hazardous chemicals and ancient bacteria and viruses that were previously frozen underground are being released by the thaw.
Plant matter emerging from thawing permafrost can also produce greenhouse gas emissions as it decomposes in warmer conditions, making the climate emergency worse. The greenhouse gas emissions currently locked up in frozen permafrost is around double the amount already in the atmosphere.
Once emitted from thawed permafrost, these greenhouse gas emissions cannot be returned. Further melting can only be prevented if global temperature rises stop.
Learn More
Permafrost (Met Office)
Permafrost and methane hydrates (Carbon Brief)
▶️ Happening to Us (Youth Climate Report, YouTube)
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Learn from and help groups representing Indigenous people who are affected by permafrost melt, such as:
Rising temperatures are disrupting the patterns of weather on which societies and ecosystems rely. For example, global heating has impacted African and Asian monsoon systems, which are crucial to food production. The collapse of major parts of the climate system could make these impacts far more severe globally.
The potential shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as the Gulf Stream, has caused particular concern. Its system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean influence the climate across the world. The AMOC has weakened by about 15% since the mid-twentieth century.
The collapse of the AMOC could cause major changes to global temperatures and rainfall patterns. This would have severe knock-on impacts for food production. It could also impact other parts of the climate system, including further disrupting monsoons across India and Africa.
These risks can be reduced if greenhouse gas emissions are ended so that temperatures no longer rise. For the changes that have already started, communities can become more resilient to disruption of monsoons and other weather patterns important to flourishing societies and ecosystems through investment in protective infrastructure, good healthcare systems and new emergency procedures.
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Support relief in areas impacted by monsoons.
