Amazon Dries Out as Worst Ever Drought Hits Rainforest

[buzzsaw_23]

Amazon dries out as worst ever drought hits rainforest

Alex Bellos in Manaus
Saturday October 1, 2005
The Guardian

Large parts of the Amazon rainforest are at their driest in living memory, a direct consequence, scientists say, of the severe hurricane season off the US Gulf coast.

Rainfall has been significantly below average this year along the Rio Solimoes and the Rio Madeira, two of the major Brazilian tributaries that flow into the Amazon, causing water levels to drop to record lows. Rivers and lakes are drying up, revealing huge sandbanks and making navigation difficult for boats. Since many towns are only accessible by river, medicine, food and fuel are running out in some communities.

"There is no rain here because the air is descending, which prevents the formation of clouds," said Ricardo Dellarosa, of the Amazon Protection Organisation (Sipam) in Manaus. "The air is descending here because the air is rising very intensely in the north Atlantic, creating storms and hurricanes. What goes up must come down."

Gilvan Sampaio of the National Institute of Space Research said the north Atlantic was slightly warmer than usual, which had shifted the tropical weather system further north. A secondary factor, he added, was that cold fronts that usually came from the south of Brazil at this time of year had not been arriving. "These cold fronts have been heading straight into the ocean, instead of heading north towards the Amazon."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1582355,00.html

[valerief]

1. The total oxymoron: rainforest drought

Scary

[halobeam]

2. We ruined this beautiful planet. We robbed our kids.

We need a miracle.

[valerief]

3. I didn't

You probably didn't either.

The powerful who didn't listen to our pleas to save the planet did. The powerful who stole our votes killed the planet. The plunderers put Earth to its grave.

[Demonaut]

4. 3 more years till that "miracle"

when that fungus is ejected from the WH

[bananas]

5. Brazilian cold fronts heading into the ocean instead of the Amazon

When told of this, Bush said "OH NO!" and held his head in his hands.
Then he looked up and asked, "How many is a brazillion?"

[tom_paine]

6. I wonder how much longer until we see forest fires in the Amazon

Yes, it certainly look as if we have drawn close to, if not crossed over, the Point of No Return.

[lostnfound]

7. kicked. This is worse news than the polar ice caps.

The lungs of the planet.

[buzzsaw_23]

8. Read this recent report-Melting Planet

Melting Planet

Species are dying out faster than we have dared recognise, scientists will warn this week. The erosion of polar ice is the first break in a fragile chain of life extending across the planet, from bears in the north to penguins in the far south

By Andrew Buncombe in Anchorage and Severin Carrell in London

Published: 02 October 2005

Thinning ice and longer summers are destroying the bears' habitat, and as the ice floes shrink, the desperate animals are driven by starvation into human settlements - to be shot. Stranded polar bears are drowning in large numbers as they try to swim hundreds of miles to find increasingly scarce ice floes. Local hunters find their corpses floating on seas once coated in a thick skin of ice.

<snip>

Some of its findings include:

* Four out of five migratory birds listed by the UN face problems ranging from lower water tables to increased droughts, spreading deserts and shifting food supplies in their crucial "fuelling stations" as they migrate.

* One-third of turtle nesting sites in the Caribbean - home to diminishing numbers of green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles - would be swamped by a sea level rise of 50cm (20ins). This will "drastically" hit their numbers. At the same time, shallow waters used by the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, dolphins, dugongs and manatees will slowly disappear.

* Whales, salmon, cod, penguins and kittiwakes are affected by shifts in distribution and abundance of krill and plankton, which has "declined in places to a hundredth or thousandth of former numbers because of warmer sea-surface temperatures."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article316604.ece

[MisterP]

9. Indonesia, then Brazil

by 2082, there'll be a tree in Kinshasa called "The Tree," (formerly "The Last Tree," 2067-73).

[Dhampir Kampf]

10. Oh snap.

"Global warming is just a theory, that isn't proven, and isn't followed by all scientists".

My ass.