Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
node · earth · Amazon Basin, Cerrado and the La Plata basin
The airborne transport of water vapour across South America, from the tropical Atlantic westward over the Amazon and then, blocked by the Andes, southeastward toward the subtropics. Arraut and colleagues described this in 2012 as a system of aerial rivers and aerial lakes: narrow, fast corridors of vapour transport with slower reservoirs of moisture between them, structurally analogous to a surface drainage network but running in the opposite direction relative to the continent. The southbound limb is carried by the South American Low-Level Jet running along the eastern flank of the Andes, and it delivers moisture to the Cerrado, southern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina - the agricultural and hydroelectric core of the continent. The volume comparison usually made is that the forest returns more water to the atmosphere each day than the Amazon River discharges to the ocean. Whether or not the arithmetic is exactly right, the structural claim is the one that matters: a farm in Sao Paulo and a turbine in Parana are downstream of a forest two thousand kilometres away, by air.
Read in · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 3
- Moisture Recyclingdepends_on
- Nevado Mismiconstrained_by
- Cerradoaffects
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 28 blocks · 1 evidence · 35 related
- Story
- The airborne transport of water vapour across South America, from the tropical Atlantic westward over the Amazon and then, blocked by the Andes, southeastward toward the subtropics. Arraut and colleagues described this in 2012 as a system of aerial rivers and aerial lakes: narrow, fast corridors of vapour transport with slower reservoirs of moisture between them, structurally analogous to a surface drainage network but running in the opposite direction relative to the continent. The southbound limb is carried by the South American Low-Level Jet running along the eastern flank of the Andes, and it delivers moisture to the Cerrado, southern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina - the agricultural and hydroelectric core of the continent. The volume comparison usually made is that the forest returns more water to the atmosphere each day than the Amazon River discharges to the ocean. Whether or not the arithmetic is exactly right, the structural claim is the one that matters: a farm in Sao Paulo and a turbine in Parana are downstream of a forest two thousand kilometres away, by air.
- Knowledge
- Nevado Mismi
- Moisture Recycling
- Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
- Cerrado
- Connections
- Moisture Recycling
- Nevado Mismi
- Cerrado
- Amazon Basin
- Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
- Cascading Moisture Recycling
- Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
- Amazon Deforestation
- The Amazon Dieback Threshold
- Eneas Salati
- Isotope study quantifies Amazonian moisture recycling
- The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory begins operating
- Amazon River
- Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
- The Carhuasanta stream on Nevado Mismi is identified as the Amazon source
- Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
- Arc of Deforestation (Arco do Desmatamento)
- Amazon Soy Moratorium
- Evidence
- Supports the aerial river and aerial lake description of moisture transport across South America and the southeastward deflection of Amazonian moisture along the eastern Andes toward the subtropics. V55 verification basis: not retrieved or read in this session; citation and finding stated from the producing model's knowledge.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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