In particular, as a result of climate -induced fires, they recorded a record range of rainforests over the past yearResearchers from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) monitoring platform said on Wednesday. TASR informs according to AFP report.
According to them, the world lost 67,000 square kilometers of rare tropical rainforest last yearwhich is even a third more than the area of Slovakia. Losses are 80 percent higher than in 2023, says Global Forest Watch. “This level of forest destruction has been completely unprecedented over the past 20 years of data recording,” She said GFW co -chairman Elizabeth Goldman.
Almost half of these losses were caused by fires, for the first time as the main cause of the forest destruction, agriculture overtaken. Loss of tree crop in 2024 – due to deforestation and fires, whether deliberate or random – caused more than three tons of carbon dioxidewhich exceeded India emissions from the use of fossil fuels for the same period, writes AFP.
Tropical forests, characterized by the greatest concentration of biodiversity, are the most endangered of all forest biomas on the planet. They also capture carbon dioxide, helping to prevent even faster growth of global temperatures.
Forest fires are also the result of climate change, because they release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn accelerates warming and creates conditions leading to even more devastating fires, explains AFP. Last year’s exceptional fires were created in extreme weather conditions, so they were even more intense and harder to manageResearchers said.
Climate change caused by massive combustion of fossil fuels and supported by the natural phenomenon of El Niño caused 2024 to be the hottest in the history of measurements, with average temperatures of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre -industrial level, Reminds AFP. The protection of forest stands is one of the most important points of the agenda of this year’s UN climate summit – COP30 – which will take place in November in the Brazilian city of Belém.
