Vol 000 |00 Month 2008 | doi:10.1038/nature06960; Increasing risk of Amazonian drought due to decreasing aerosol pollution LETTERS
The Amazon rainforest plays a crucial role in the climate system, helping to drive atmospheric circulations in the tropics by absorbing energy and recycling about half of the rainfall that falls on it. This region (Amazonia) is also estimated to contain about onetenth of the total carbon stored in l...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.379.1755 http://www.ibcperu.org/doc/isis/10881.pdf |
| Summary: | The Amazon rainforest plays a crucial role in the climate system, helping to drive atmospheric circulations in the tropics by absorbing energy and recycling about half of the rainfall that falls on it. This region (Amazonia) is also estimated to contain about onetenth of the total carbon stored in land ecosystems, and to account for one-tenth of global, net primary productivity 1. The resilience of the forest to the combined pressures of deforestation and global warming is therefore of great concern 2, especially as some general circulation models (GCMs) predict a severe drying of Amazonia in the twenty-first century 3–5. Here we analyse these climate projections with reference to the 2005 drought in western Amazonia, which was associated 6 with unusually warm North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs). We show that reduction of dryseason (July–October) rainfall in western Amazonia correlates well with an index of the north–south SST gradient across the |
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