Viewed from high above, the Amazon in South America is a lush emerald quilt, home to millions of animals and the planet’s largest river by volume. It is also key to protecting our planet from the detrimental effects of climate change.The Amazon’s sheer size—it covers nearly seven million square kilometers, or about the area of Australia—makes it shine on the climate stage. With so many trees covering such an enormous swath of land, everything the forest “does” is big and impactful.
Tree loss brings other consequences, Nobre says. During the dry season, more intense sunshine causes vast amounts of water—stored in trees and soils from wet periods—to transpire. That water vapor “reaches the lower atmosphere and becomes clouds and rain again,” Nobre explains. “One molecule of water vapor that enters the Amazon recycles between five to eight times,” he adds, illustrating the importance of this hydrological engine in recharging regional rainfall.
The Amazon’s estimated 150-billion-ton-plus carbon bank is the equivalent of more than 10 years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions, Nobre says. If the entire Amazon degraded into an open, savannalike landscape, local rainfall would decline by up to 30 percent, with consequences felt as far as Colombia and Argentina, where rainfall cycles are partially fed by moisture from the Amazon, Nobre explains.
I don't think it's a crises. Please stop the fear mongering
There is no climate change
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