It is now official. The Amazon has 'reversed,' releasing more greenhouse dioxide than it absorbs.

According to a shocking study published in the journal “Nature Climate Change,” the thick rainforest that has been long thought to be consuming human-caused pollution released about 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the last decade than what it absorbed.

Though the planet has been grappling with an unstoppable epidemic, scientists involved in the research discovered that between 2010 and 2019, Brazil's Amazon basin emitted 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2, while absorbing just 13.9 billion tonnes.

The research compared the amount of CO2 consumed and retained by the forest as it expands to the volume produced back into the environment as it is burnt down or demolished.

“We partially expect it, but this is the first time we possess statistics showing that the Brazilian Amazon has reversed and has become a big emitter,” said co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron of France's National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).

“Humans don't realize when the transition will become permanent,” he informed AFP in an interview.

The report also found that deforestation — by fires and clear-cutting, that have expanded under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's reign — almost quadrupled in 2019 relative to the previous two years, rising from around one million hectares (2.5 million acres) to 3.9 million hectares, a region the size of Netherlands.

Previous year the Amazon basin, one of the world's richest forests and home to thousands of indigenous groups, saw the deadliest fires in a decade.

The area is home to approximately half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more powerful than other forms of forests at absorbing and retaining carbon.

Another finding of the study was that depleted forests were a greater cause of planet-warming CO2 pollution than blatant deforestation.

The researchers concluded that throughout the same 10-year stretch, from 2010 to 2019, deforestation triggered three times greater pollution than outright forest loss.