Monday Moaning

A drought is coming to land near you.

In recent months Brazil has undergone a severe water shortage, particularly in the state of São Paulo. A report in the news this morning is rather disturbing. It appears that deforestation of the Amazon basin has reached a threshhold The vegetation of the Amazon basin let moisture rise and so produce the clouds that moved across the country and fell as rain. Apparently, there is not enough vegetation left to make suffcient moisture to form the necessary clouds. Brazil’s inaction, or insufficient action, has caused their own demise. Had the country been more prudent earlier, we wouldn’t have these drought problems. Another example of man’s inability to husband the planet effectively.

Drought bites as Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ dry up

Scientists say deforestation and climate change responsible for forests not producing vapour clouds that bring rain to Brazil, reports Climate News Network

Amazon rainforest kick up humidity that brings rain to Brazil – it’s a giant water pump, but human activity is damaging it. Photograph: Fernanda Preto/Getty Images

The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil.

Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of rain that has dried up rivers and reservoirs in central and southeast Brazil is not just a quirk of nature, but a change brought about by a combination of the continuing deforestation of the Amazon and global warming.

This combination, they say, is reducing the role of the Amazon rainforest as a giant “water pump”, releasing billions of litres of humidity from the trees into the air in the form of vapour.

Meteorologist Jose Marengo, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, first coined the phrase “flying rivers” to describe these massive volumes of vapour that rise from the rainforest, travel west, and then − blocked by the Andes − turn south.

Satellite images from the Centre for Weather Forecasts and Climate Research of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) clearly show that, during January and February this year, the flying rivers failed to arrive, unlike the previous five years.

Deforestation all over Brazil has reached alarming proportions: 22% of the Amazon rainforest (an area larger than Portugal, Italy and Germany combined), 47% of the Cerrado in central Brazil, and 91.5% of the Atlantic forest that used to cover the entire length of the coastal area.

Latest figures from Deter, the real time deforestation detection system based on high frequency satellite images used by INPE, show that, after falling for two years, Amazon deforestation rose again by 10% between August 2013 and July 2014. The forest is being cleared for logging and farming.

Tocantins, Pará and Mato Grosso, three states in the Greater Amazon region that have suffered massive deforestation, are all registering higher average temperatures.

As long ago as 2009, Antonio Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading climate scientists, warned that, without the “flying rivers”, the area that produces 70% of South America’s GNP would be desert.

Source: TheGuardian Read more