UN Climate Claims On Rain Forests Were Wrong
UN climate change claims on rainforests were wrong, study suggests
The United Nations' climate change panel is facing fresh criticism after new research contradicted the organisation's claims about the devastating effect climate change could have on the Amazon rainforest.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM GMT 13 Mar 2010
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A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation Photo: REX
The findings appear to disprove claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland.
The IPCC has already faced intense criticism for using a report by environmental lobby group WWF as the basis for its claim, which in turn had failed to cite the original source of the research.
Scientists have now spoken out against the 40% figure contained in the IPCC report and say that recent research is suggesting that the rainforest may be more resilient to climate change than had been previously thought.
It comes just days after the UN announced an independent review into the panel's procedures following a series of scandals over its most recent report which was found to contain factual errors and claims which were not based on rigorous scientific research.
The InterAcademy Council, which is the umbrella organisation for the national academies of science around the world, will examine how the IPCC's reports are compiled and communicated.
Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a member of the IPCC, said the latest study on the Amazon's response to drought highlighted the errors in the previous claims.
He said: "The way the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct."
The new study, conducted by researchers at Boston University and published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data of the Amazon rainforest to study the effects of a major drought in 2005 when rainfall fell to the lowest level in living memory.
The drought saw rivers and lakes dry up, causing towns and cities that rely upon water flowing out of the rainforest to suffer severe water shortages.
But the researchers found no major changes in the levels of vegetation and greenery in the forests despite the drought.
They claim this contradicts the statements made in the IPCC's 2007 assessment report on climate change.
It said: "Up to 40 % of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state.
"It is more probably that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannahs."
Professor Ranga Myneni, from the climate and vegitation research group at Boston University who was the senior researcher in the study, said criticised the IPCC’s claim that a “even a slight reduction in precipitationâ€
