“Radiator of the world”, the Amazon Rainforest is responsible for helping to regulate rainfall in South America

The Amazon Forest has a greater significance than representing 7% of the entire surface of the planet and having 10% of all the biodiversity in the world. It is also directly responsible for helping to control the amount of rain that hits our country and even our neighbors.

A study carried out by Professor Henrique Barbosa, from the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP), points out that 25% of the rains in the South and Southeast regions come from the Amazon region.

“Moisture recycling is very important, a good part of the rain is returned by the forest back to the atmosphere, it evaporates or is transpired back, it is an important contribution”, he said, in an interview with CNN Radio.

David Lapola, a researcher at the Center for Meteorological and Climate Research Applied to Agriculture (CEPAGRI), at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), explains that trees work like a kind of straw, pulling moisture from the air from the lower layers of the soil and releasing steam of water to the atmosphere, through the ‘transpiration’ of the trees.

“The amount of water that this represents is enormous, even considering the size of the Forest. This ends up reducing the temperature. It’s like those fans with unified humidifiers”, he exemplifies.

There is a second concept called “flying rivers”. The researcher said that this happens when a moisture corridor is formed that comes to the South and Southeast — and, therefore, this amount of precipitation represents a quarter of what rains in these regions. So much so that Lapola considers the Amazon to be “the radiator of the world”, and not the lungs, as it does not produce that much oxygen.

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Ricardo de Camargo, professor at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG) at USP, explains that the positive impact does not only extend to Brazil, and reinforces that this “recycling” that the Amazon Forest does is fundamental.

“We know that much of the precipitation that reaches the Midwest, South, Southeast, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia has an important share of moisture from the Amazon rainforest. Not that it is the main source, but it manages to maintain the humidity that comes from the Atlantic Ocean and balances the seasons ”, he explains.

It is estimated that at least 20% of the Brazilian forest (which represents 61.8% of the total among the eight countries) has already been deforested. Even if, eventually, this were recovered, Camargo considers that there is already irreversible damage.

“If we think on a longer time scale, the availability of moisture to the surroundings, through atmospheric circulation – like wind, for example – will be even more impacted by deforestation. And we already see a change in the rainfall index in some localities. The chance of this reversing is very small, ”she laments.

The Meteorology division of the Amazon Protection System (Sipam) began to point out some of these effects: the rains predicted for Rondônia this week, for example, did not happen, because of a mass of dry air and heat.

“When there is deforestation, the forest loses the ability to remove moisture from the deeper layers of the soil, and evaporation only happens with what is on the surface”, adds Lapola.

A study led by Callum Smith, from the University of Leeds, published in the journal Nature, collected precipitation data via satellite between the years 2013 and 2017. One of the conclusions is that deforestation disrupts the water cycle and significantly reduces rainfall. , mainly in the rainy seasons, and that the drop in the amount of precipitation may exceed 8% by 2050 in South America.

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