Humid Air Currents Which Transport Moisture Throughout Amazon Basin May Be Failing, Aiding Drought

[hatrack]

The Amazon's "flying rivers"—humid air currents that deliver water to the vast rain forest—may be ebbing, which could have dire consequences for the region's ability to curb global warming, an expert said this week at the Copenhagen climate conference. Rising temperatures in the Amazon region, in large part due to climate change, are creating more arid savannas, which disrupt the water cycle vital to Brazil's farming and energy industries.

Deforestation also plays a role. As more of Brazil's rain forests fall to logging and agriculture, there are fewer trees to release the water vapor that creates these flying rivers. Until recently, Amazon forest loss has been primarily linked to the trees' role in trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which are a root cause of global warming.

"Most people look at the Amazon as the lungs of the world, or as a solution to capture CO2," said Gérard Moss, an engineer and founder of the Flying Rivers Project, an ongoing effort to document the humid air currents and their effects. "But I'd like people to realize that the Amazon Basin is a huge water pump—rain is most valuable asset," he said by phone Wednesday in Copenhagen, where he gave a press briefing on the project earlier this week.

EDIT

Since 2003, Moss has flown through Brazil's airborne rivers in a single-engine plane to collect water vapor samples. The vapor's chemical "footprints" are then analyzed at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA) in Piracicaba, in the state of Sao Paulo. The project's goal has been to figure out where the water comes from and then map how wind currents carry water across the vast Amazon Basin. For instance, Salati's research in the 1980s showed that more than half of the Amazon's rainfall emanates from trees, with the rest coming from vapor from surface water bodies.

EDIT

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091217-amazon-flying-rivers-climate.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Wow. Sure makes a person glad that it's impossible for little old humans

to have any impact whatsoever on climate.

[jwirr]

2. One of the worst things we have done is destroy the rain forests -

they are the climate thermostat.

[Gregorian]

3. DISMANTLE AGRI-BUSINESS NOW.

The proposal drafts at the climate change conference have been watered down. The big and powerful countries are protecting their investments and industry.

Let the indigenous people take care of their lands.

As the problem begins to heat up even more, people will not stand for inaction. They will not tolerate another 8 year period of nonparticipation like we had in the bush misadministration.


Edit- Now what was it that you posted? I got carried away here.

[Odin2005]

4. Dear God, what have we done?

:cry:

[amborin]

5. Scary! hope everyone also realizes Canada's Boreal Forest is a Huge Treasure, too

[GliderGuider]

6. Our forest products companies sure realize it.

Oh, that's not what you meant?

[amborin]

8. here's what i meant:

<http://www.borealbirds.org/borealbirdspetition.shtml>

(but you're right....home depot, mining corps, etc.....all eager to continue trashing it)

[GliderGuider]

7. Well,

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Fuck.

OK, I think I feel a little better now.

Fuck.

No, I guess I don't.