Earth System Dynamics
Earth System Dynamics
ESD
Articles | Volume 15, issue 4
Articles | Volume 15, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-913-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-913-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 15, issue 4
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
24 Jul 2024
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 24 Jul 2024

Observation-inferred resilience loss of the Amazon rainforest possibly due to internal climate variability

Raphael Grodofzig, Martin Renoult, and Thorsten Mauritsen

Data sets

The Global Long-term Microwave Vegetation Optical Depth Climate Archive VODCA (1.0) L. Moesinger et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2575599

The Climate Model Intercomparison Project version 6 data ensemble CMIP6_database https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/

The Land Use Harmonization 2 data set for CMIP6 LUH2_database https://luh.umd.edu/data.shtml

RAISG RAISG_data https://www.raisg.org/en/maps

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The Amazon forest is frequently discussed as a tipping element in the Earth System. This study uses a multi-model multi-member ensemble of climate model simulations with interactive vegetation dynamics to evidence the importance of local land-management strategies for increasing Amazon resilience.
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Short summary
We investigate whether the Amazon rainforest has lost substantial resilience since 1990. This assertion is based on trends in the observational record of vegetation density. We calculate the same metrics in a large number of climate model simulations and find that several models behave indistinguishably from the observations, suggesting that the observed trend could be caused by internal variability and that the cause of the ongoing rapid loss of Amazon rainforest is not mainly global warming.
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