From 2010 through 2019, Brazil's Amazon basin gave off 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9 billion tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study looked at the volume of CO2 absorbed and stored as the forest grows, versus the amounts released back into the atmosphere as it has been burned down or destroyed.
"We half-expected it, but it is the first time that we have figures showing that the Brazilian Amazon has flipped, and is now a net emitter," said co-author lean-Pierre Wigneron, a scientist at France's National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).
"We don't know at what point the changeover could become irreversible," he told AFP in an interview.
The study also showed that deforestation- through fires and clear-cutting increased nearly four-fold in 2019 compared to either of the two previous years, from about one million hectares to 3.9 million hectares.
"Brazil saw a sharp decline in the application of environmental protection policies after the change of government in 2019," the INRA said in a statement.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sworn into office on Jan 1, 2019.
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Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb C02 emissions, which topped 40 billion tonnes in 2019.
Over the last half-century, plants and soil have consistently absorbed about 30 percent of those emissions, even as those emissions increased by 50 percent over that period.
Oceans have also helped, soaking up more than 20 percent.
The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon than other vegetation types.