A ‘super’ El Niño could transform the Amazon. Is the world’s biggest rainforest doomed? The Amazon rainforest might be closer to a tipping point than scientists thought. Some fear that droughts and fire could nudge it into irreversible decline. By Quentin Septer

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02449-w?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=2923aae61a-nature-briefing-daily-20260811&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-50432164 Droughts caused by the 2023-2024 El Niño event fuelled some of the Amazon rainforest’s worst wildfires, from which it has yet to fully recover. Now, another El Niño is brewing, which some forecasters predict could be the strongest in 150 years. This event, on top of warming and drying caused by climate change, might push the rainforest past its ‘tipping point’, researchers say. If that were to happen, rainforest would give way to savannah and degraded woodland over decades, potentially releasing an amount of carbon equivalent to several years of global emissions.