The Amazon rainforest is drying out due to rising human activity, leaving the already endangered ecosystem more vulnerable to fires and drought. This was revealed by a NASA study based on data collected over 20 years. NASA scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, looked at ground and satellite data to track moisture in Amazon rainforest’s atmosphere for this study.
“We observed that in the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in dryness in the atmosphere as well as in the atmospheric demand for water above the rainforest,” said JPL’s Armineh Barkhordarian, lead author of the study. “In comparing this trend to data from models that estimate climate variability over thousands of years, we determined that the change in atmospheric aridity is well beyond what would be expected from natural climate variability.”
Increasing human activity in Amazon, mainly burning of the forests is causing the climate to get warmer. The study showed that the burning of forests results in the release of particles called aerosols into the atmosphere, which includes black carbon or soot and these interfere with rain patterns.Read More..
