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Cascading Moisture Recycling

node · earth · Amazon Basin

The refinement that turns moisture recycling from an average into a chain. Simple recycling asks what fraction of rainfall at a point came from evapotranspiration somewhere in the basin. Cascading recycling asks how many times the same water has done it: a molecule evaporated from the Atlantic may fall in Para, be transpired, fall again in Amazonas, be transpired again, and reach Acre or Rondonia only on its third or fourth landfall. Zemp and colleagues quantified this cascade and drew the consequence that makes it dangerous. If recycling is a chain, then forest loss anywhere upwind shortens the chain everywhere downwind, and the loss is not proportional to the area cleared - it compounds. Their modelling found that vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks can substantially amplify forest loss beyond what deforestation and climate change would cause independently, with the southern and southwestern basin most exposed. This is the specific reason that "how much forest is left" is a worse question than "where is the forest that is left".

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Assembled from 18 blocks · 1 evidence · 30 related

  1. Story
  2. The refinement that turns moisture recycling from an average into a chain. Simple recycling asks what fraction of rainfall at a point came from evapotranspiration somewhere in the basin. Cascading recycling asks how many times the same water has done it: a molecule evaporated from the Atlantic may fall in Para, be transpired, fall again in Amazonas, be transpired again, and reach Acre or Rondonia only on its third or fourth landfall. Zemp and colleagues quantified this cascade and drew the consequence that makes it dangerous. If recycling is a chain, then forest loss anywhere upwind shortens the chain everywhere downwind, and the loss is not proportional to the area cleared - it compounds. Their modelling found that vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks can substantially amplify forest loss beyond what deforestation and climate change would cause independently, with the southern and southwestern basin most exposed. This is the specific reason that "how much forest is left" is a worse question than "where is the forest that is left".
  3. Knowledge
  4. Moisture Recycling
  5. Cascading Moisture Recycling
  6. Connections
  7. Moisture Recycling
  8. Amazon Basin
  9. Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
  10. Cascading Moisture Recycling
  11. Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
  12. Amazon Deforestation
  13. The Amazon Dieback Threshold
  14. Eneas Salati
  15. Isotope study quantifies Amazonian moisture recycling
  16. The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory begins operating
  17. Evidence
  18. Supports the cascading moisture recycling account and the finding that vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks can amplify forest loss beyond the direct effect of deforestation and climate change, with the southern and southwestern basin most exposed. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the magnitude of the amplification is deliberately not quoted.
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