This post was contributed by Rafael Araujo from Climate Policy Initiative in collaboration with Evan Bollig and Ilan Gleiser from AWS.
The Amazon Rainforest holds the equivalent to the historical cumulative carbon emissions of the United States, meaning that if this amount of carbon were released in the atmosphere, it would be impossible to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Beyond its role as a carbon sink, the Amazon Rainforest is the world’s most biodiverse region, home to more than 30 million people, and provides vital ecosystem services for a variety of economic activities throughout South America.
This blog post will discuss the “tipping point” problem, using High Performance Computing (HPC) on AWS to calculate the potential impact of deforestation on the risk of further damage to the entire Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest “Tipping Point” Problem
Despite its global importance, 20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been deforested, endangering climate stability. Tropical forests are integral to the water cycle, serving as natural pumps that absorb water from the soil and transfer it to the atmosphere, resulting in downwind precipitation.
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