Amazon's Changing Climate

• Acts as a global and regional regulator
• Pumps 20 bn tonnes of H2O into atmosphere daily = 3 bn more than Amazon river discharges into ocean
• Forests uniform humidity lowers atmospheric pressure hence allowing moisture from Atlantic Ocean to reach further inland than areas without forest cover
• Rain bearing winds travel west until deflected by Andes hence transporting moisture south to Buenos Aires and East to Sao Paulo
• Since 1990: more extreme cycle of drought and flood has developed in Amazonia + wetter rainy season caused by shifts in ITCZ

  ICTZ = concentration of warm air producing rainfall due to Hadley cell. Moves N and S across equator seasonally. Small shifts in location causes drought in some areas.
• Rainfall has appreciably decreased downwind of the deforested areas with Sao Paulo in a water crisis
• 2005, 2010 , 2015 and 2016 = severe droughts so increases stress that is already high due to decades of deforestation
• Drier Amazon = forest becoming a net carbon emitter rather than a major global store (as at present)