The Amazon rainforest has been suffering through the effects of a mega-drought, covering an area more than twice the size of California, since 2005, a new NASA-led study has found.

This new research, ‘when combined with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.