December 11, 2025 | 03:23 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - New research indicates that the Amazon rainforest is approaching a so-called hypertropical climate, a condition that has not existed on Earth for at least 10 million years.
The study, published in Nature on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, warns that climate change is driving increasingly frequent and extreme hot droughts, threatening the rainforest’s health and carbon storage capacity.
What Is a Hypertropical Climate?
According to lead author Jeff Chambers, a geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley, hypertropical climates are characterized by exceptionally high temperatures combined with extended dry conditions.
“When these hot droughts occur, that's the climate that we associate with a hypertropical forest, because it's beyond the boundary of what we consider to be tropical forest now,” he explained, as cited by Live Science.
The last time such a climate existed was during the Eocene and Miocene periods, when global temperatures were far higher than today.
Now, the Amazon is showing early signs of a similar pattern as global warming accelerates and dry seasons lengthen.
How Hot Droughts Impact the Forest
The research team analyzed 30 years of data in the northern Amazon near Manaus, Brazil, including temperature, humidity, soil moisture, sunlight, water flow, and tree sap measurements.
Their findings show that during hot droughts, trees struggle to access water and stop absorbing carbon dioxide (CO).
Higher evaporation rates dry out the soil, forcing trees to close leaf pores to conserve water, but this also prevents CO intake, which is essential for growth and tissue recovery. In extreme cases, trees may die from “CO starvation.”
The study also highlights a critical threshold: when soil moisture falls below 33 percent, bubbles form in the trees’ sap, blocking internal water circulation, similar to blood clots in humans.
If enough bubbles accumulate, trees die. This mechanism was observed during major El Niño events in 2015 and 2023 and confirmed in other regions of the Amazon.
Long-Term Consequences
Currently, the Amazon sees an annual tree mortality rate slightly above 1 percent. Researchers warn this could rise to 1.55 percent by 2100 under continued emissions, a seemingly small increase with potentially huge ecological consequences.
Fast-growing trees are especially vulnerable, potentially giving slow-growing species a competitive advantage in a changing climate.
The findings suggest that other tropical rainforests, including those in West Africa and Southeast Asia, may undergo similar hypertropical transitions, affecting the global carbon cycle. Rainforests are critical carbon sinks, and their decline could accelerate climate change worldwide.
The Role of Human Action
Chambers emphasized that these projections assume minimal reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s up to us how far we will actually create this hypertropical climate. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases as much as we want without control, we will create this hypertropical climate faster,” he said.
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