Independent newspaper snip (unedited): Climate-driven changes in the Amazon basin have knock-on effects on the Tibetan Plateau 20,000 kilometres (12,500 miles) away, scientists in China, Europe and Israel reported in Nature Climate Change earlier this month.
“We’ve been surprised to see how strongly climate extremes in the Amazon are connected to climate extremes in Tibet,” said co-author Jurgen Kurths from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The researchers used global near-surface temperature data over the last 40 years to map out a pathway of climate links. They stretched from South America to Southern Africa, on to the Middle East and finally into the Tibetan Plateau.
In their study, the researchers then used computer simulations to track how global warming might change these long-distance link-ups out to 2100.
They found that when it gets warmer in the Amazon, temperatures also rise in Tibet. But when rain increases in the South American rainforest, snowfall decreases in the Himalayan region, sometimes called the “third pole”.
