IPCC Amazon Rainforest Research Seriously Flawed

GreenTracker| a NASA-funded study disputes earlier conclusions reached regarding Amazon rainforests by the IPCC. Following a 2005 drought in the Amazon, the IPCC concluded that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine and less foliage canopy under cloud-less skies.

The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim — based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study — that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

“Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall,” said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

“The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct,” said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC. via Science Daily