Carlos Nobre, a Brazilian expert on climate-change impacts in the Amazon region, is a distinguished scientist at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies. He co-chairs the UN-sponsored, nongovernmental Science Panel for the Amazon, a group of over 300 scientists that produces scientific assessments of the biome. Nobre also co-chairs the Science Pavillion being set up at the U.N. climate conference (COP30), to be held in November in the Brazilian city of Belém. He posits a “tipping point” at which climate effects caused by Amazon land clearing could turn 50% to 60% of the rainforest into dry savanna. He has done so on the strength of experience in a variety of scientific posts in the Brazilian government, largely at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), whose activities include satellite monitoring of deforestation. Nobre earned a degree in electronics engineering at Brazil’s Aeronautics Technology Institute (ITA) in 1974 and a Ph.D. in meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. He spoke recently by telephone with EcoAméricas correspondent Michael Kepp.
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