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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/precipitation/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:38:21 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<title>News on Precipitation</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/precipitation/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>South America’s farms depend, in part, on a healthy Amazon</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/south-americas-farms-depend-in-part-on-a-healthy-amazon/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/south-americas-farms-depend-in-part-on-a-healthy-amazon/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Jun 2026 08:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/22052817/amazon_201362-26x-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=321533</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Conservation, Drought, Ecosystem Services, El Nino, Environment, Environmental Policy, Environmental Services, Fires, forest degradation, Forests, Hydroelectric Power, Natural Capital, Nature-based climate solutions, Precipitation, Rainforests, Restoration, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Soy, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Deforestation, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[&#160; The Amazon is often described in terms of how much carbon it stores. It also moves vast amounts of water. Its trees draw moisture from the soil and return it to the air through transpiration. Some rain caught by the canopy also evaporates back into the atmosphere. That moisture falls again, some of it [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[&nbsp; The Amazon is often described in terms of how much carbon it stores. It also moves vast amounts of water. Its trees draw moisture from the soil and return it to the air through transpiration. Some rain caught by the canopy also evaporates back into the atmosphere. That moisture falls again, some of it inside the basin and some of it far downwind. For much of South America, the forest helps sustain rainfall, farming, hydropower, and urban water supplies. A recent paper in Nature, by Nico Wunderling and colleagues, gives this hydrological role greater weight in the climate case for the Amazon. The authors used a dynamical systems model and atmospheric moisture tracking to estimate how deforestation and warming interact across the basin. Without deforestation, their model finds a critical global warming threshold of about 3.7 to 4.0 degrees Celsius, beyond which up to a third of the Amazon forest risks losing stability. When deforestation is included, the risk becomes much larger at a lower level of warming. Under deforestation of 22% to 28% of the biome and warming of 1.5 to 1.9 degrees Celsius, the model finds a near system-wide transition affecting 62% to 77% of the forest. Rain over the Amazon. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler Those numbers should be treated carefully. The Amazon is not a single ecological unit. Western forests, southern forests, flooded forests, upland forests, secondary forests, and fire-damaged edges differ in species composition, rainfall, soils, and drought tolerance. A model cannot capture every&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/south-americas-farms-depend-in-part-on-a-healthy-amazon/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/south-americas-farms-depend-in-part-on-a-healthy-amazon/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-321533</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sri Lanka’s recent drowning deaths linked to aftermath of extreme weather events</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/sri-lankas-recent-drowning-deaths-linked-to-aftermath-of-extreme-weather-events/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/sri-lankas-recent-drowning-deaths-linked-to-aftermath-of-extreme-weather-events/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Jun 2026 18:09:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Kamanthi Wickramasinghe]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Dilrukshi Handunnetti]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/10175248/Edited_No-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320930</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, South Asia, and Sri Lanka]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Environment, Flooding, Precipitation, Research, Rivers, Science, Sedimentation, and Tropics]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[DEDURU OYA, Sri Lanka – On April 16, eight members of Priyantha Kumara’s family including his wife, son, brother, father-in-law, and four other relatives were swept away by strong currents in the Deduru Oya, a river in Sri Lanka’s North Western province. Sri Lanka Police reported more than 30 drowning deaths between April 12 and [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[DEDURU OYA, Sri Lanka – On April 16, eight members of Priyantha Kumara’s family including his wife, son, brother, father-in-law, and four other relatives were swept away by strong currents in the Deduru Oya, a river in Sri Lanka’s North Western province. Sri Lanka Police reported more than 30 drowning deaths between April 12 and 21 this year, underscoring the risks posed by flooding rivers. Sri Lanka Police media spokesperson Udaya Kumara Wootler told Mongabay that 376 individuals have died due to drowning in rivers last year while 595 fatalities were reported in 2024. Buddhika Sampath, spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Navy told Mongabay that the Navy Diving Unit recovered 148 bodies of people between May 2022 and May 2023. While the police are yet to disclose official statistics of deaths due to drowning from January to May 2026, the number of reported incidents show over 50 fatalities. Kumara is a resident of Gopallawa in the northwestern district of Kurunegala. His son had requested that they all go for a bath in the river. The group had been bathing at a popular spot named Kuriyagas Mankada when they met the tragedy. “My son was only 13 years old, and he was a bright student,” Kumara told Mongabay. “My brother was about to hold a housewarming ceremony at his newly built house. But all these dreams were shattered within seconds. My father used to take us to this same spot to bathe when we were young. But the river has changed&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/sri-lankas-recent-drowning-deaths-linked-to-aftermath-of-extreme-weather-events/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320930</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>After quinoa’s boom, Bolivian farmers face degraded soils and climate stress</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/after-quinoas-boom-bolivian-farmers-face-degraded-soils-and-climate-stress/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/after-quinoas-boom-bolivian-farmers-face-degraded-soils-and-climate-stress/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 May 2026 15:15:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Benjamin Swift]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[agroecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food systems]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/13161907/Benjamin-Swift_DJI_0055-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=319215</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Bolivia, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Crops, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Farming, Fertilizers, Impact Of Climate Change, Monocultures, Planetary Boundaries, Precipitation, Regenerative production landscapes, Restoration, and Soil Carbon]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[AROMA MARKA, Bolivia — The rolling hills around the town of Aroma Marka are a cacophony of colors: golden-yellow, deep-red and purplish-black quinoa pods smatter the otherwise barren landscape here in Bolivia’s southern Altiplano, the Andean Plateau. At 3,800 meters (about 12,500 feet) above sea level, the Altiplano stretches across much of western Bolivia and [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[AROMA MARKA, Bolivia — The rolling hills around the town of Aroma Marka are a cacophony of colors: golden-yellow, deep-red and purplish-black quinoa pods smatter the otherwise barren landscape here in Bolivia’s southern Altiplano, the Andean Plateau. At 3,800 meters (about 12,500 feet) above sea level, the Altiplano stretches across much of western Bolivia and into Peru, Chile and Argentina. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) has been grown on the Altiplano since pre-Hispanic times, but it was only recently that the nutrient-dense pseudocereal was put on the global map, fueling a production boom in the Andes. Prices later tumbled as countries outside the region also began cultivating it. Yet the striking scenery belies the lasting scars the 2010-2014 quinoa boom left in the region. At its height, sky-high prices triggered a production frenzy, drawing former residents back from cities to plant the “golden grain.” But Walter Canaviri, a quinoa producer and local leader, remembers that the sudden spike came at a cost. “Everyone wanted to produce more,” he told Mongabay. In the rush to capitalize on the moment, some growers encroached on neighbors’ lands, leading to disputes. “It was a sad time for this area because everyone turned against everyone,” he said. While the quinoa boom brought a temporary boon for rural Andean Indigenous communities, it also came with the destruction of local ecosystems, soil degradation, and social conflict – all of which have been exacerbated by changes in regional weather patterns and global climate change. Though Bolivian producers like Canaviri are&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/after-quinoas-boom-bolivian-farmers-face-degraded-soils-and-climate-stress/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-319215</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Novel research finds unexpected climate resilience in up to 36% of Amazon forest</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2026 03:23:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Justin Catanoso]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/09222759/1-Palms-along-river-in-Manu-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=317301</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, carbon, Climate, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Fires, Forest Fragmentation, Forests, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Temperatures, Threats To Rainforests, Tipping points, Trees, Water, and Wetlands]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Reports on the health and vitality of the Amazon — often dubbed as Earth’s lungs — have been grim for years. Record drought has stressed large swaths of the world’s largest rainforest. Major Amazon River tributaries, including the Rio Negro and Madeira River, hit their lowest levels in more than a century of measurement in [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Reports on the health and vitality of the Amazon — often dubbed as Earth’s lungs — have been grim for years. Record drought has stressed large swaths of the world’s largest rainforest. Major Amazon River tributaries, including the Rio Negro and Madeira River, hit their lowest levels in more than a century of measurement in 2024. And experts warn that deforestation and wildfires are tipping parts of the biome from carbon sink to source. Yet in Manaus, a city at the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, forest ecologist Flávia Costa is upbeat as she highlights what appears to be a previously underappreciated underlying Amazon reality: Her research finds that the region’s vast wetlands, or shallow water table areas, have proven to be stubbornly drought resistant through years of intensifying climate change. In fact, her long-term research reveals that palm species and other wetland trees are not just surviving drought seasons, they’re maintaining their health and even adding biomass. That could mean these areas could serve as valuable refugia, as other parts of Amazonia degrade. Significantly, these shallow water table areas compose 36% of Amazonia and have been a crucial part of the evolving rainforest ecosystem for millions of years. Sturdy, resilient palms account for one in five tree species across the Amazon, which includes parts of nine nations, and of which Brazil occupies 60%. These forested wetlands and Costa’s research represent one bright spot in the Amazon’s otherwise gloomy projected trajectory for the 21st century — forecasts built on decades&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/novel-research-finds-unexpected-climate-resilience-in-up-to-36-of-amazon-forest/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-317301</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Study finds deforestation accounts for major Amazon rainfall decline</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/study-finds-deforestation-accounts-for-major-amazon-rainfall-decline/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/study-finds-deforestation-accounts-for-major-amazon-rainfall-decline/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Mar 2026 18:59:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Logan Rance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/09/14142838/2-Amazon-logging-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316342</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Climate Science, Deforestation, Forest Destruction, Forest Loss, Forests, Impact Of Climate Change, Mitigation, Precipitation, Rainforests, Reforestation, Research, Threats To Rainforests, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Forest loss, along with climate change, is changing the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest. By disrupting the movement of moisture through the atmosphere, deforestation is reducing rainfall and extending the dry season, especially in the southern Amazon Basin. But according to recent research, the impacts of large-scale deforestation could be much bigger than climate models [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Forest loss, along with climate change, is changing the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest. By disrupting the movement of moisture through the atmosphere, deforestation is reducing rainfall and extending the dry season, especially in the southern Amazon Basin. But according to recent research, the impacts of large-scale deforestation could be much bigger than climate models have estimated for the region. A study published in Nature Communications found that between 52% and 72% of the rainfall decline in the southern Amazon Basin over the last four decades can be attributed to deforestation. Between 1980 and 2019, annual precipitation in the area has dropped by 8-11%. Additionally, researchers determined that rainfall decline was not just attributed to local forest loss, but to deforestation in upwind regions across South America. “Many studies only focus on the local scale, and local land-atmosphere feedback,” Jiangpeng Cui, associate professor at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research and lead author of the study, told Mongabay in an interview. “We combined observational data, like precipitation and evapotranspiration, with moisture tracking across South America. … This way we can know how [deforestation] changes vapor movement from one place to another.” Since 1985, natural forest cover in South America has declined by 16%, largely due to human-caused deforestation. In the Brazilian Amazon, which lost one-fifth of its forest cover between 1970 and 2019, primary forest is frequently converted to agricultural land or destroyed by wildfires. According to the study, cutting down large swaths of forest reduces the available evapotranspiration that&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/study-finds-deforestation-accounts-for-major-amazon-rainfall-decline/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-316342</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Climate change drives uneven shifts in tree diversity across Amazon and Andes</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/climate-change-drives-uneven-shifts-in-tree-diversity-across-amazon-and-andes/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/climate-change-drives-uneven-shifts-in-tree-diversity-across-amazon-and-andes/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Feb 2026 09:57:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Constance Malleret]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/07/14100659/amazon_241209124744z-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314949</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Andes, and Latin America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Climate Change, Cloud Forests, Conservation, Deforestation, Fires, Forests, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Rainforests, Research, Threats To Rainforests, and Trees]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The tropical forests of the Amazon and Andes are some of the most biodiverse places on the planet, but across both regions, changes in climate and landscape conditions are driving a shift in the number of tree species, recent research has found. Although the overall number of tree species across the Andes and Amazon hasn’t [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The tropical forests of the Amazon and Andes are some of the most biodiverse places on the planet, but across both regions, changes in climate and landscape conditions are driving a shift in the number of tree species, recent research has found. Although the overall number of tree species across the Andes and Amazon hasn’t changed in recent decades, some subregions are gaining species while others are losing them, according to the study published in Nature Ecology &amp; Evolution. Trees provide vital ecosystem services, and changes in their diversity — what experts call tree richness — could have an impact, including on the forests’ role in temperature regulation or carbon storage. Using more than 40 years of tree diversity data, the study found that species richness declined in the central Andes, the Guyana Shield, and the central-eastern Amazon subregions. Meanwhile, it increased in the northern Andes and western Amazon, and didn’t change significantly in the southern Amazon. Researchers used data from 406 different forest plots across 10 countries, paired with records of climate indicators. “Forests are changing and now we have evidence that it’s linked to climate change,” said Belén Fadrique, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool in the U.K. and lead author of the study, which involved more than 160 co-authors. “We do find that a majority of sites are decreasing in richness,” Fadrique told Mongabay in a video interview. In total, 203 plots declined in tree richness and 146 increased, the research found. Overall, the richness&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/climate-change-drives-uneven-shifts-in-tree-diversity-across-amazon-and-andes/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314949</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The Amazon’s most valuable export isn’t timber — it’s rain</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/the-amazon-generates-20-billion-of-dollars-worth-of-rainfall-each-year-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/the-amazon-generates-20-billion-of-dollars-worth-of-rainfall-each-year-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Feb 2026 00:40:28 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/18234721/ecuador_236175-26-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314446</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Environmental Services, Forests, Green, Hydroelectric Power, Precipitation, Rainforests, Rivers, Tropical Forests, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. A growing body of research suggests that in the tropics, it is also a product of ecosystems. Forests do not merely receive rain. They help generate it, regulate its distribution, and sustain the conditions that allow it [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. A growing body of research suggests that in the tropics, it is also a product of ecosystems. Forests do not merely receive rain. They help generate it, regulate its distribution, and sustain the conditions that allow it to persist. “Quantifying tropical forest rainfall generation”, a review paper recently published in the journal Communications Earth &#038; Environment, attempts to measure a process long recognized but rarely expressed in concrete terms: how much rain forests themselves produce. By combining satellite observations with climate models, the authors estimate that each square meter of tropical forest generates roughly 240 liters of rainfall per year across the broader landscape, rising to about 300 liters in the Amazon Basin. Rather than treating forests as passive recipients of climate, the study depicts them as active participants in shaping it. The mechanism begins with evapotranspiration. Trees draw water from soils and release it into the atmosphere through their leaves. This vapor contributes to cloud formation and precipitation downwind. While the physics is familiar, the novelty lies in quantifying the effect at scale. On average, each percentage point of tropical forest loss reduces regional rainfall by about 2.4 millimeters annually, with larger effects in the Amazon. Satellite observations suggest even stronger impacts than most models, implying that current projections may underestimate the hydrological consequences of deforestation. Sunrise over the Pinipini river in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Forests export&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/the-amazon-generates-20-billion-of-dollars-worth-of-rainfall-each-year-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/the-amazon-generates-20-billion-of-dollars-worth-of-rainfall-each-year-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314446</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Forests don’t just store carbon. They keep people alive, scientists say</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/forests-dont-just-store-carbon-they-keep-people-alive-scientists-say/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/forests-dont-just-store-carbon-they-keep-people-alive-scientists-say/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Feb 2026 17:57:40 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/26174503/14-brunei_251114145042_0254z-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314250</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Forests, Green, Mitigation, Precipitation, Rainforests, Temperate Forests, Temperatures, Tropical Forests, Water, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For decades, a dominant argument for protecting forests has focused on carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, store it in wood and soils, and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. A new scientific review suggests this emphasis overlooks other ways forests shape climate and human well-being. Forests, it argues, are not only a mitigation tool for [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For decades, a dominant argument for protecting forests has focused on carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, store it in wood and soils, and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. A new scientific review suggests this emphasis overlooks other ways forests shape climate and human well-being. Forests, it argues, are not only a mitigation tool for the future climate. They also help people adapt to climate change today, shaping temperature, water and human well-being in ways that are felt locally. The paper, “More than mitigation: The role of forests in climate adaptation,” synthesizes research on how forests regulate climate through physical processes as much as chemical ones. At local scales, trees act as thermal buffers. Canopies shade the ground and drive evapotranspiration, a process that converts heat into water vapor. Across nearly one hundred field sites, daytime temperatures inside forests were on average about 4°C lower than in nearby open areas, while nighttime temperatures were slightly higher. The result is a narrowing of extremes: cooler afternoons, milder nights. These effects intensify in hotter climates. Tropical forests show the strongest cooling, often exceeding 6°C relative to cleared land. Even urban trees produce measurable relief, lowering air temperatures by roughly 1.5–1.7°C on sunny days. For people exposed to heat stress, the difference between forest shade and bare ground is not marginal. Apparent temperatures during heat events have been recorded as 6–14.5°C lower inside forests than outside. Mist over the rainforest in Borneo. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler Deforestation therefore alters not just landscapes&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/forests-dont-just-store-carbon-they-keep-people-alive-scientists-say/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/forests-dont-just-store-carbon-they-keep-people-alive-scientists-say/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314250</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>More deforestation leads to a drier dry season, Amazon study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/more-deforestation-leads-to-a-drier-dry-season-amazon-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/more-deforestation-leads-to-a-drier-dry-season-amazon-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Sep 2025 12:05:59 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Logan Rance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/09/14142838/2-Amazon-logging-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=305907</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, and Latin America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Drought, Forest Destruction, Forest Loss, Freshwater, Impact Of Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Precipitation, Rainforests, Reforestation, Regulations, Research, and Threats To Rainforests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In Brazil’s southern Amazonian region, where the notorious “arc of deforestation” has been expanding since the 1970s, forest loss is reshaping the region’s atmospheric water cycle. As the Amazon Rainforest releases moisture into the atmosphere, it fuels the rains that feed rivers, crops, wildlife and communities. But as deforestation disrupts the water exchange between forest [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In Brazil’s southern Amazonian region, where the notorious “arc of deforestation” has been expanding since the 1970s, forest loss is reshaping the region’s atmospheric water cycle. As the Amazon Rainforest releases moisture into the atmosphere, it fuels the rains that feed rivers, crops, wildlife and communities. But as deforestation disrupts the water exchange between forest and atmosphere, it significantly reduces the amount of rain in the dry season, researchers have recently found. The team from Nanjing University, China, and the University of Leeds, U.K., analyzed how deforestation in the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso — which together are responsible for about 30% of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in recent decades — affected the atmospheric water cycle between 2002 and 2015. They found that a 3.2% mean loss of forest cover led to a 5.4% reduction in dry season rainfall, highlighting that precipitation in the Amazon is highly sensitive to changes in forest cover. Deforestation deals a “double whammy” of blows to the climate, Dominick Spracklen, study co-author and professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds, told Mongabay by phone. In addition to reducing how much water vapor is pumped into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration, deforestation also weakens the atmosphere’s ability to pull in water vapor from other regions. By altering how Earth’s surface absorbs and reflects heat, deforestation led to warmer, drier air above the study area. This dry air impaired atmospheric convection, a process that moves warm air up and brings cool air down&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/more-deforestation-leads-to-a-drier-dry-season-amazon-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/more-deforestation-leads-to-a-drier-dry-season-amazon-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-305907</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Why is rainfall declining in the Amazon? New research says deforestation is the leading driver</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/why-is-rainfall-declining-in-the-amazon-new-research-says-deforestation-is-the-leading-driver/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/why-is-rainfall-declining-in-the-amazon-new-research-says-deforestation-is-the-leading-driver/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Sep 2025 23:17:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/09/02231252/amazon_peru_22057300-2560px-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=305312</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Forests, Green, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Tropical Forests, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For decades the world’s largest rainforest has been getting drier. A new study published in Nature Communications disentangles how much of this shift can be blamed on humanity’s warming of the planet and how much on the felling of trees within the Amazon itself. The answer: More than many had expected. Researchers led by Marco [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For decades the world’s largest rainforest has been getting drier. A new study published in Nature Communications disentangles how much of this shift can be blamed on humanity’s warming of the planet and how much on the felling of trees within the Amazon itself. The answer: More than many had expected. Researchers led by Marco Franco and Luiz Augusto Toledo Machado at the University of São Paulo analyzed 35 years of land-use and atmospheric data across Brazil’s “Legal Amazon,” a territory of roughly 5 million square kilometers that covers most of the biome. Using statistical models, they separated the effect of global greenhouse-gas increases from local forest loss. Their results suggest deforestation accounts for nearly three-quarters of the rainfall decline and about one-sixth of the warming during the dry season since the mid-1980s. The numbers are stark. Between 1985 and 2020, dry-season rainfall fell by about 21 millimeters per year, of which 15.8mm—74.5%—was linked to deforestation. Maximum daily temperatures rose by around 2°C, with 0.39°C, or 16.5%, attributed to tree loss. The rest was due to global climate change. The findings provide quantitative backing to what ecologists and meteorologists have long suspected: forest clearance alters not only carbon balances but also local weather. Amazonian trees are active players in climate. Each day, billions draw water from the soil and release it into the air through transpiration, supplying more than 40% of the region’s rainfall. This moisture rises into the atmosphere and condenses, forming clouds that later return as rain. The&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/why-is-rainfall-declining-in-the-amazon-new-research-says-deforestation-is-the-leading-driver/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/why-is-rainfall-declining-in-the-amazon-new-research-says-deforestation-is-the-leading-driver/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-305312</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tropical forest roots show strain as changes aboveground filter below</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/tropical-forest-roots-show-strain-as-changes-aboveground-filter-below/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/tropical-forest-roots-show-strain-as-changes-aboveground-filter-below/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Jul 2025 16:59:44 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Petro Kotzé]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/07/15090836/1-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=302479</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Central America, Costa Rica, Global, Latin America, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Singapore]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Conservation, data, Deforestation, Drought, Ecosystems, El Nino, Environment, forest degradation, Forests, Fungi, Plants, Precipitation, Rainforests, Research, Symbiotic Relationships, Trees, Tropical Forests, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The destruction of tropical rainforests — seen in shocking images of huge wildfires, vast clear-cuts and dying drought-stressed trees — is unfolding annually before the world&#8217;s eyes. But some serious changes in growing forests are occurring unseen, below the surface. As aboveground changes in those forests intensify, those effects are also filtering underground, and researchers [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The destruction of tropical rainforests — seen in shocking images of huge wildfires, vast clear-cuts and dying drought-stressed trees — is unfolding annually before the world&#8217;s eyes. But some serious changes in growing forests are occurring unseen, below the surface. As aboveground changes in those forests intensify, those effects are also filtering underground, and researchers are sounding the alarm due to potentially adverse changes to tropical forest roots. Roots are key to how rainforest trees and soils capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide, especially as climate change progresses, says Daniela F. Cusack, associate professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University. The hidden world of plant roots, and the impacts of human-caused stressors on them, is not yet well understood, but important clues are emerging. An overlooked science While underground plant growth is more difficult to study than what’s happening aboveground, roots are no less important than forest floor to canopy processes, explains Cusack, who is also a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Scientists began looking at the complex tropical forest underworld about 40 years ago. Today, they know tropical tree species’ roots grow in a mat on the forest floor to collect nutrients from composting vegetative matter. Some trees have shallow root systems that run for more than 100 meters (325 feet) to steady the tall trees, especially since strong winds often rock the canopy. Others have evolved large, thin extensions of the trunk that begin some 6 m (20 ft)&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/tropical-forest-roots-show-strain-as-changes-aboveground-filter-below/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-302479</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Ground-level ozone pollution poses growing threat to planetary health</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ground-level-ozone-pollution-poses-growing-threat-to-planetary-health/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ground-level-ozone-pollution-poses-growing-threat-to-planetary-health/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Apr 2025 15:14:27 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sean Mowbray]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/04/02110718/10-B-A-N-A-N-A-S-Uganda-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=296897</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Bioenergy, Climate Change, Climate Science, Crops, Earth Science, Fires, forest degradation, Forests, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Health, Heatwave, Mitigation, Ozone Layer, Planetary Health, Politics, Pollution, Precipitation, Public Health, Science, and Temperatures]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the ozone layer protects humanity and all life from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. But in the troposphere, at ground level, this gas can wreak havoc on planetary health in myriad ways. As temperatures increase due to climate change, the ozone problem is forecast to worsen in many parts of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the ozone layer protects humanity and all life from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. But in the troposphere, at ground level, this gas can wreak havoc on planetary health in myriad ways. As temperatures increase due to climate change, the ozone problem is forecast to worsen in many parts of the world — including heavily populated urban and rural areas in the tropics. Ground-level zone isn’t a direct emission; it’s created when precursors such as methane, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds react together with sunlight. These precursors include many anthropogenic sources — especially the burning of fossil fuels (in vehicles, by industry and at power plants) and via agriculture and wildfires, all of which crank up tropospheric ozone levels. “The problem with ozone is it&#8217;s an incredibly active molecule and somewhat unstable in the environment. It interacts with everything it touches,” Nathan Borgford-Parnell, coordinator of the Scientific Advisory Panel and Science Affairs at the Climate &amp; Clean Air Coalition, told Mongabay in an interview. That makes tropospheric ozone a planetary health problem that threatens human health, food security and biodiversity. “The concerns are quite legion,” says Borgford-Parnell. Ground-level ozone pollution is getting worse due to what experts have dubbed the “ozone-climate penalty.” Though ozone’s formation is complex, it is closely tied to higher temperatures. That’s why the problem generally peaks in warmer months; which was true in 2024 — officially the hottest year on record, with ozone pollution spiking during European summer&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ground-level-ozone-pollution-poses-growing-threat-to-planetary-health/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-296897</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The Amazon is ablaze again. What it means for us (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/the-amazon-is-ablaze-again-what-it-means-for-us-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/the-amazon-is-ablaze-again-what-it-means-for-us-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Sep 2024 00:08:30 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mark J. Plotkin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/09/27150306/amazon_201359_24-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=287959</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, South America, and Suriname]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Botany, Climate Change, Commentary, Conservation, Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Fires, Forests, Green, Impact Of Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Medicinal Plants, Precipitation, Rainforests, Threats To Rainforests, Traditional People, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In 2019, the world watched in horror as images of the Amazon rainforest ablaze flooded the news. Over 70,000 wildfires raged uncontrollably, killing wildlife, filling hospitals with patients struggling to breathe, polluting rivers, halting air traffic, and casting a dark pall over Brazil’s largest cities. And now, it&#8217;s happening again. Climate change is no longer [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In 2019, the world watched in horror as images of the Amazon rainforest ablaze flooded the news. Over 70,000 wildfires raged uncontrollably, killing wildlife, filling hospitals with patients struggling to breathe, polluting rivers, halting air traffic, and casting a dark pall over Brazil’s largest cities. And now, it&#8217;s happening again. Scorched earth on the banks of the drought-stricken Xingu River in the Capoto-Jarina Indigenous Territory on September 12th, 2024. Photo © Marizilda Cruppe / Greenpeace. Fire on the banks of the drought-stricken Xingu River in the Capoto-Jarina Indigenous Territory on September 12th, 2024. Photo © Marizilda Cruppe / Greenpeace. Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it’s here, growing more severe with each year. We are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events—more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods, and droughts. Rising sea levels are flooding coastlines, endangering entire island nations as well as major American cities like New York and my hometown of New Orleans. Worsening heatwaves are threatening to make vast regions of the Middle East and Indian subcontinent uninhabitable. Climate refugees and drought can only lead to more human misery and additional conflict. Number of fire hotspots detected by the Aqua satellite across Brazilian biomes between Jan 1 and Sep 26, 1998-2024, according to INPE. Number of fire hotspots detected by the Aqua satellite across the Brazilian Amazon (Amazonia) between Jan 1 and Sep 26, 1998-2024, according to INPE. Ironically, some of South America’s most traditional peoples were among the first to raise the alarm about global&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/the-amazon-is-ablaze-again-what-it-means-for-us-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-287959</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Climate change detectable in daily rainfall patterns, deep-learning model finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/climate-change-detectable-in-daily-rainfall-patterns-deep-learning-model-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/climate-change-detectable-in-daily-rainfall-patterns-deep-learning-model-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Sep 2023 08:16:54 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhishyant Kidangoor]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhishyantkidangoor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/09/27080744/toucan-rain-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=273670</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Climate, Climate Change, Environment, Extreme Weather, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Research, Technology, Temperatures, Weather, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Scientists have long known that global warming is upending not just seasonal climate trends, but also minute weather patterns on a daily basis. However, establishing a strong link hasn’t always been easy, which means most research has focused on climate change’s impact on long-term trends, such as annual precipitation or monthly temperature increases. The past [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Scientists have long known that global warming is upending not just seasonal climate trends, but also minute weather patterns on a daily basis. However, establishing a strong link hasn’t always been easy, which means most research has focused on climate change’s impact on long-term trends, such as annual precipitation or monthly temperature increases. The past few years, though, have seen data and subsequent modeling get more detailed and nuanced. A study published in 2020 in the journal Nature Climate Change delineated how the impact of climate change was detectable from the changes in daily temperature and moisture around the world. On the heels of that research, and partly inspired by it, another group of researchers took up the task of understanding how variations in daily rainfall might be linked to global warming. Using a deep-learning model, the scientists determined how, on any single day, global warming is impacting, and significantly altering, rainfall patterns around the world. In their study published in August in the journal Nature, the researchers described how “daily precipitation has now become more variable due to human-induced global warming.” While variability has always been a hallmark of daily weather (think of how often weather forecasts have been off), things like rainfall or snow can generally be narrowed down to a band of probability (hence “a 30% chance of rain,” rather than a definitive declaration of rain). The model that the researchers developed for their study found that every year since 2015, daily rainfall deviated clearly from this&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/climate-change-detectable-in-daily-rainfall-patterns-deep-learning-model-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/climate-change-detectable-in-daily-rainfall-patterns-deep-learning-model-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-273670</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Protected areas store a year&#8217;s worth of CO₂ emissions, study reveals</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/protected-areas-store-a-years-worth-of-co%e2%82%82-emissions-study-reveals/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/protected-areas-store-a-years-worth-of-co%e2%82%82-emissions-study-reveals/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jun 2023 14:20:01 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sean Mowbray]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Nandithachandraprakash]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/06/07032621/Brazils-Florestal-Reserve-Adolpho-Ducke-1920-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=269323</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering Climate Now]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Global, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Environment, Extreme Weather, Forest Carbon, Forest Loss, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Research, Soil Carbon, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Conservation Science, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Researchers analyzed never-before-used satellite data to calculate how much carbon is stored in protected areas worldwide.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[By avoiding deforestation, globally protected areas store roughly one year’s worth of global fossil fuel emissions, compared to otherwise unprotected areas. That’s the conclusion of a recently published study that sought to calculate the carbon benefits of preserving forests and other landscapes. Brazil’s Amazon has the highest rate of carbon stock of protected areas, according to the study, accounting for as much as 36% of the total. “These forests are the most threatened by human pressure, so protected areas are particularly important here,” Laura Duncanson, an assistant professor of geographical sciences at the University of Maryland and lead author of the new paper published June 1 in Nature Communications, told Mongabay in an email. Scientists from the University of Maryland, Northern Arizona University, the University of Arizona, and Conservation International worked with never-before-used satellite data, gathered by NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI). They found protected areas stock an additional 9.65 billion metric tons of carbon in their aboveground biomass, compared to ecologically similar unprotected areas. Avoided deforestation and degradation are the main reasons behind this additional carbon stock, the authors say. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. A view over Brazil’s Florestal Reserve Adolpho Ducke. Researchers found that protected areas store as much carbon as fossil fuels emit per year and are more effective at doing so compared to unprotected areas with a similar ecology. Image by IMF/Raphael Alves via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). For Patrick Roehrdanz, study co-author and manager of spatial planning&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/protected-areas-store-a-years-worth-of-co%e2%82%82-emissions-study-reveals/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/protected-areas-store-a-years-worth-of-co%e2%82%82-emissions-study-reveals/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-269323</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Amazon deforestation linked to reduced Tibetan snows, Antarctic ice loss: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/amazon-deforestation-linked-to-reduced-tibetan-snows-antarctic-ice-loss-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/amazon-deforestation-linked-to-reduced-tibetan-snows-antarctic-ice-loss-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Mar 2023 09:37:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claire Asher]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/03/08091731/7-burned-areas-in-the-Amazon-Rainforest-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=266245</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering Climate Now, Covering the Commons, and Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Antarctica, Asia, Brazil, Latin America, South America, and Tibetan Plateau]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Deforestation, Drought, Earth Science, Environment, Extreme Weather, Fires, Forests, Governance, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Science, and Temperatures]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Analysis of 40 years of climate temperature data shows a connection between Amazon tree loss and Tibetan snow decrease via a 20,000-kilometer oceanic and atmospheric pathway. West Antarctica is also impacted.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[There’s a recent saying, grown popular among climate scientists: “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.” Now, new research adds to our understanding that, likewise, what happens in the Amazon Rainforest doesn’t stay there. Researchers reporting in Nature Climate Change last month found that deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest may have knock-on effects for the climate in distant regions, potentially pushing key elements of the global climate system — on the Tibetan Plateau and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — closer to climatic tipping points that could be catastrophic for humanity and our planet’s biodiversity. Earth’s climate is controlled by a complex network of interactions between its atmosphere, oceans, land, ice and biosphere. Scientists have identified many elements of this system that humanity’s actions are presently pushing toward thresholds, or tipping points, beyond which changes become self-sustaining — ultimately causing the whole Earth system to shift into a new state possibly hostile to life in its current forms. “Earth system components that have a critical threshold beyond which a system reorganizes are called tipping elements,” explained study co-author Jingfang Fan, an Earth system scientist at Beijing Normal University in China and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany. These tipping elements include the Amazon Rainforest biome, the East and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Arctic permafrost, and the Great Barrier Reef, among others. It is theorized that a tipping point reached in one region could trigger a tipping point in another, and so on,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/amazon-deforestation-linked-to-reduced-tibetan-snows-antarctic-ice-loss-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/amazon-deforestation-linked-to-reduced-tibetan-snows-antarctic-ice-loss-study/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-266245</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Carbon uptake in tropical forests withers in drier future: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/carbon-uptake-in-tropical-forests-withers-in-drier-future-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/carbon-uptake-in-tropical-forests-withers-in-drier-future-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Feb 2023 09:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/02/23090146/wayquecha-andes-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=265858</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Global, and Tropics]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Environment, Extreme Weather, Forest Carbon, Forest Loss, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Rainforests, Research, Soil Carbon, Temperatures, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Conservation Science, Tropical Forests, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Warmer temperatures could significantly diminish the ability of tropical forests to siphon carbon from the atmosphere by intensifying dry seasons, according to a recent study. The tropics pack away an enormous amount of organic matter, or biomass, in the trees and other organisms inhabiting these ecosystems. Locked up in that biomass is more than half [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Warmer temperatures could significantly diminish the ability of tropical forests to siphon carbon from the atmosphere by intensifying dry seasons, according to a recent study. The tropics pack away an enormous amount of organic matter, or biomass, in the trees and other organisms inhabiting these ecosystems. Locked up in that biomass is more than half the world’s aboveground carbon — the equivalent of around 20 years of human-caused emissions. Scientists often use climate models to predict how a warmer future might affect these forests, including their ability to take up carbon and allay the impacts of climate change. But these models aren’t always able to incorporate some of the major impacts of escalating climate change — such as precipitation changes, heat stress or wind — on the forests. “There are so many things going on,” said Maria del Rosario Uribe, the study’s lead author and an ecologist and postdoctoral scholar at Yale University in the U.S. Uribe and her colleagues, in search of a more accurate rendering of how changes to the climate could alter tropical ecosystems, brought together satellite mapping of biomass along with the observed effects of temperature and precipitation from experiments going back to the mid-20th century. The resulting models revealed that, even with relatively low emissions, these ecosystems could lose between 6.8 and 12% of the aboveground carbon they held in 1950 by 2100. In a scenario with higher emissions, these forests could lose more than 20% of that carbon, the team wrote Feb. 6 in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/carbon-uptake-in-tropical-forests-withers-in-drier-future-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/carbon-uptake-in-tropical-forests-withers-in-drier-future-study/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-265858</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Freshwater planetary boundary “considerably” transgressed: New research</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/freshwater-planetary-boundary-considerably-transgressed-new-research/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/freshwater-planetary-boundary-considerably-transgressed-new-research/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Apr 2022 14:44:49 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Petro Kotzé]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/04/27144247/BANNER-IMAGE-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=255189</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering the Commons and Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon and Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Drought, Ecosystems, Environment, Extreme Weather, Freshwater, Global Environmental Crisis, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Research, Rivers, Water, and Water Scarcity]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A reassessment by an international group of scientists finds that human-caused destabilization of the water cycle is seriously impacting global soil moisture, with knock on effects for forests and other ecosystems.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Humanity’s modification of the water cycle has pushed the world further beyond a safe operating space for continued life on Earth, say scientists. A reassessment of the planetary boundary for freshwater that now includes rainfall, soil moisture and evaporation — so-called “green water” — found the boundary to be “considerably transgressed,” with the situation likely to worsen before any reversals in the trend will be observed. Previously, researchers had only considered rivers, lakes and groundwater in their evaluations. “Green water modifications are now causing rising Earth system risks at a scale that modern civilizations might not have ever faced,” according to researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre in collaboration with colleagues from Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Australia, the U.S. and Canada. The findings were published this week in the journal Nature Reviews Earth &amp; Environment. “This is a wake-up call that we need to stop how we modify green water,” says lead author Lan Wang-Erlandsson from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. “We are profoundly changing the water cycle,” she says, noting that this Earth system destabilization is now affecting the health of the entire planet, making it significantly less resilient to environmental shocks. The nine planetary boundaries, counterclockwise from top: climate change, biosphere integrity (functional and genetic), land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, and release of novel chemicals. In 2022, scientists announced the transgression of both the freshwater and novel entities boundaries. Image courtesy of J. Lokrantz/Azote based&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/freshwater-planetary-boundary-considerably-transgressed-new-research/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/freshwater-planetary-boundary-considerably-transgressed-new-research/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-255189</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Efforts to dim Sun and cool Earth must be blocked, say scientists</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/01/efforts-to-dim-sun-and-cool-earth-must-be-blocked-say-scientists/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/01/efforts-to-dim-sun-and-cool-earth-must-be-blocked-say-scientists/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Jan 2022 16:19:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shanna Hanbury]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/01/24160514/2-BANNER-768x450.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=251938</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering the Commons and Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon and Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Air Pollution, Climate Change, Climate Science, Drought, Earth Science, Forests, Geoengineering, Global Warming, Mitigation, Ocean Acidification, Oceans, Ozone Layer, Politics, Pollution, Precipitation, Science, and Temperatures]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Initiatives to inject billions of aerosol particles into the stratosphere to deflect solar rays and cool Earth are too risky to go forward; governments must act fast to rein in potentially disastrous planetary-scale solar geoengineering, say critics.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Blocking the sun’s rays with an artificial particle shield launched high into Earth’s atmosphere to curb global temperatures is a technological fix gaining traction as a last resort for containing the climate crisis — but it needs to be stopped, wrote a coalition of over 60 academics in an open letter and article released in the WIREs (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews) Climate Change online publication on January 17. “Some things we should just restrict at the outset,” said one of the open letter&#8217;s lead authors, Aarti Gupta, a professor of Global Environmental Governance at Wageningen University. Gupta placed solar geoengineering in the category of high-risk technologies, like human cloning and chemical weapons, that need to be off-limits. “It might be possible to do, but it’s too risky,” she told Mongabay in an interview. The color of the sky could change. The chemical composition of the ozone layer and oceans may be permanently altered. Photosynthesis, which depends on sunlight, may slow down, possibly harming biodiversity and agriculture. And global weather patterns could change unpredictably. Despite the potential dangers, no mechanism exists today to stop an individual, company or country from launching a solo mission, said Gupta. To prevent this, the open letter suggests five urgent protective measures: no outdoor experiments, no implementation, no patents, no public funding, and no support from international institutions such as the United Nations. The 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines threw enough sulfate and other aerosol particles into the stratosphere to cool the Earth. Image&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/01/efforts-to-dim-sun-and-cool-earth-must-be-blocked-say-scientists/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/01/efforts-to-dim-sun-and-cool-earth-must-be-blocked-say-scientists/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-251938</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Lessons from Brazil’s São Paulo droughts (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-brazils-sao-paulo-droughts-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-brazils-sao-paulo-droughts-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Jul 2021 02:27:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Philip M. Fearnside]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/07/30005559/brazil_oli_2021168-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=245345</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[agribusiness, Agriculture, Business, Cities, Climate Change, Commentary, Drought, Ecosystem Services, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Hydroelectric Power, Oceans, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Temperatures, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La Niña events result from a cooling of surface water in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1). On a decadal scale, the driest [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La Niña events result from a cooling of surface water in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1). On a decadal scale, the driest decades in this region correspond to those with a combination of cold water in the Pacific, indicated by negative values of the Pacific Oscillation Index (POI), and warmer water in the South Atlantic, indicated by positive values of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index. This is the case in 2021, and in April the POI dropped dramatically to even more negative values. Warm water in the Atlantic and cold water in the Pacific off South America in April 2021. Source: CPTEC/INPE This year southeastern Brazil has been hit with a major drought affecting hydropower generation, agriculture and urban water supplies. The primary factor is a large variation in rainfall linked to global climate change, with the effect of the gradual increase in Amazonian deforestation being a smaller effect added onto this variation. However, over time, the advance of deforestation will indeed lead to more drought in southeastern Brazil, especially if the “Trans-Purus” region in the western part of the Brazilian Amazon between the Purus River and the border with Peru is deforested. It is possible that deforestation in the Amazon is already having some effect on the average rainfall in southeastern Brazil, as climate models&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-brazils-sao-paulo-droughts-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-brazils-sao-paulo-droughts-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-245345</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Lessons from the 2021 Amazon flood (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-the-2021-amazon-flood-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-the-2021-amazon-flood-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Jul 2021 16:25:38 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Philip M. Fearnside]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/07/23161938/Banner-image-2021-flood-768x447.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=245199</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Climate Science, Deforestation, Extreme Weather, Flooding, Forests, Global Warming, Impact Of Climate Change, Politics, Precipitation, Rainforests, Rivers, Tropical Deforestation, Tropical Forests, Tropics, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Record floods are battering the western and central Amazon, inundating Manaus and other communities and wrecking crops. To prevent future extreme weather events, deforestation and carbon emissions must be controlled. ]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[This text is updated from a Portuguese-language version published by Amazônia Real. The drama of the record flood in the Brazilian Amazon Basin reached on 30 June 2021 offers valuable lessons that need to be learned — even as this July the Paraná River Basin south and east of the Amazon (where a third of Brazil’s people live) sees record drought. First, the flood height in Manaus that broke the record since measurements began in 1903 is consistent with predictions for climate change associated with global warming. In addition to the need to avoid the large emissions that deforestation causes, thus helping to mitigate global warming, the Amazon rainforest needs to be kept standing to maintain a variety of other essential environmental services, including water recycling. The year 2021 is a La Niña year, which always leads to more rain in the Amazon. The “southern oscillation” between El Niño and La Niña has been more frequent since 1976, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attributes this to global warming and projects that this trend is likely to continue. The variability and severity of El Niño and La Niña events are expected to increase. These phenomena, and others as well, modify the air currents around the planet, which causes extremes of drought and rain in different places. On top of the impact of La Niña, an additional factor increased the 2021 flood: the combination of warmer water in the Atlantic Ocean and cold water in the Pacific (Figure&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/lessons-from-the-2021-amazon-flood-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-245199</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Investing in Amazon Rainforest Conservation: A Foreigner’s Perspective (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/investing-in-amazon-rainforest-conservation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/investing-in-amazon-rainforest-conservation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Apr 2020 08:08:20 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jonah Wittkamper]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/04/20210856/amazon_200744-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=229219</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Blockchain, carbon, Carbon Credits, Carbon Offsets, climate finance, Commentary, Conservation, Conservation Finance, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Environmental Services, Forests, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Jurisdictional Approaches, Payments For Ecosystem Services, Politics, Precipitation, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Redd, Sustainability, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Last December, I flew to Brazil to learn everything I could about Amazon conservation.  As a global citizen, I wanted to understand more about deforestation and how I can help. I stayed for two months and met with government officials, NGOs, private sector entrepreneurs, philanthropists and other important stakeholders.  I was given some privileged access [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Last December, I flew to Brazil to learn everything I could about Amazon conservation.  As a global citizen, I wanted to understand more about deforestation and how I can help. I stayed for two months and met with government officials, NGOs, private sector entrepreneurs, philanthropists and other important stakeholders.  I was given some privileged access and came home with hope and a vision for how the international community can help develop a sustainable Amazon rainforest in ways that were never possible before. I wrote this report to help guide investors and philanthropists on their learning journeys and have included many links to help readers do further research and background reading. Mist rising from the Amazon rainforest at dawn. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay. Global Context Many scientists assert that the Amazon rainforest is the center of the global water cycle, helping to propagate rainfall and other climate patterns globally. In recent years, studies have shown that excessive Amazon deforestation disrupts rain patterns in the US and elsewhere. In 2019, for the first time in history there were unprecedented droughts and wildfires in the Arctic and Australia as well as South America and elsewhere.  The Amazon may be at a tipping point, the global water cycle may be at risk, and the global community is taking notice. According to Script Finance, while rainforests give $4 trillion in value of ecosystem services to the global economy, over $941 billion of annual turnover is at risk due to dependency on commodities&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/investing-in-amazon-rainforest-conservation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-229219</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>As climate change disrupts the annual monsoon, India must prepare (Commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/as-climate-change-disrupts-the-annual-monsoon-india-must-prepare-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/as-climate-change-disrupts-the-annual-monsoon-india-must-prepare-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Sep 2019 09:47:05 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[S. Gopikrishna Warrier]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/09/18170241/BANNER-in-768x455.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=222633</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Covering Climate Now]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Central Asia, and India]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation, Adaptation To Climate Change, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Disasters, Drought, Emission Reduction, Environment, Environmental Policy, Extreme Weather, Flooding, Global Environmental Crisis, Global Warming, Green, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Impact Of Climate Change, Mitigation, Politics, and Precipitation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Research and recent events demonstrate that climate change is intensifying and destabilizing the annual monsoon, with impacts not just for India but the world.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A house lies submerged in the flood-affected part of Kodagu in Karnataka, India. Image by Abhishek N. Chinnappa. From the time settled agriculture started on the Indian subcontinent millennia ago, farmers have been able to largely depend on the calendrical reliability of the monsoon rains to sustain crops. Every year, winds from the southwest picked up moisture from the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, and delivered it as soaking rain over the land, spread out between June and September. Then, between October and December, the same winds returned from the northeast, carrying moisture to the eastern coastline. However, this consistent seasonal cycle has been disturbed in recent years, and has become a cause of great concern not only for India, but also other countries of the subcontinent, where 1.8 billion people live. The director-general of the India Meteorological Department has confirmed to Mongabay-India that the seasonal reliability of the annual monsoons has been changing. What used to be a steady combination of rains and sun is giving way to long periods of inadequate rainfall followed by intense rain; in short — drought and floods. For instance in 2019, in the state of Kerala, at the southwestern tip of the Indian peninsula, June and July were months of inadequate rains, followed by a burst of intense storms in early August, causing floods and landslides in northern districts. The Kodagu and Chikkamaguluru districts in Karnataka state, northeast of Kerala, saw the same pattern. Avalanche, a river valley in the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/as-climate-change-disrupts-the-annual-monsoon-india-must-prepare-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-222633</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/extreme-floods-on-the-rise-in-the-amazon-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/extreme-floods-on-the-rise-in-the-amazon-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Dec 2018 15:24:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claire Asher]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/12/05152217/FEATURED-fl-768x454.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=213134</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Amazon Agribusiness]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Brazil, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, agribusiness, Agriculture, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Crops, Dams, Disasters, Drought, Extreme Weather, Flooding, Precipitation, Rainforest Destruction, Research, Rivers, and Tropics]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Severe flood events have become five times more common over the last century as a result of natural atmospheric oscillations and human-driven climate change.]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Flooding in the center of Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil in 2009. Image by Jochen Schöngart / National Institute for Amazon Research. While deepening droughts have made headlines in recent years, extreme floods have been steadily increasing in frequency and severity in parts of the Amazon basin, putting lives and livelihoods at risk. According to a new study, longer and more extreme floods are becoming increasingly common due to a combination of fluctuations in atmospheric circulation systems and human-driven climate change. Publishing in the Journal Science Advances, Jonathan Barichivich at the Universidad Austral de Chile and colleagues collated daily water level records from the Port of Manaus on the Rio Negro from 1903 to 2015, and from Óbidos on the Amazon mainstem from 1970 to 2015. They found that the frequency of severe floods in both locales has increased steadily since 1970. Together these stations measure flow for the whole of the upstream Amazon. “In the whole 20th Century, there hasn’t been floods as severe or as frequent as in the last decade,” says Barichivich. Meanwhile, droughts have intensified in parts of the Amazon. An increase in intense flooding, alternating with deeper droughts, is a finding in keeping with current global climate change models. River records are useful windows into the dynamics of large regions, as their levels are influenced by the water levels in all tributaries upstream and downstream of the measurement site. They are also among the longest ecological records available. The team identified 14 severe droughts and 14&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/extreme-floods-on-the-rise-in-the-amazon-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-213134</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>We can expect a lot more rain in a warming world, researchers say</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/we-can-expect-a-lot-more-rain-in-a-warming-world-researchers-say/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/we-can-expect-a-lot-more-rain-in-a-warming-world-researchers-say/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Feb 2017 15:07:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/02/08145110/26443936661_70f63a85a4_k-683x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=193039</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Adaptation To Climate Change, Climate Change, Environment, Extreme Weather, Global Warming, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, and Research]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[How much rain can we expect as global warming heats up the planet? Rainfall is expected to become more intense as global temperatures continue to rise, but how the duration of any given rainfall event might be impacted is still not clear. A study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[How much rain can we expect as global warming heats up the planet? Rainfall is expected to become more intense as global temperatures continue to rise, but how the duration of any given rainfall event might be impacted is still not clear. A study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) sheds new light on that question, however. The study looked at precipitation accumulation, or the amount of precipitation in any single rainfall event, and found that the largest regional precipitation events are likely to become exponentially more frequent due to global warming and the increases in atmospheric moisture content that it will bring. The frequency of large rainfall events is currently limited by physical balances in the atmosphere, according to David Neelin of the University of California, Los Angeles, the study’s lead author. Neelin and his colleagues used a global climate model and statistical theory to analyze potential changes to the upper limit of water accumulated in individual rainfall events as climate change drives average global temperatures higher. “The study got started when we were trying to understand the probability of large events versus small events in observations,” Neelin told Mongabay. “Once we got some insight into the physical balances controlling the probability of the largest accumulations, we realized these balances imply that the accumulation size at which the probability drops quickly in current climate will extend in future climate.” In other words, the largest rainstorms, which are currently less likely because of&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/we-can-expect-a-lot-more-rain-in-a-warming-world-researchers-say/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-193039</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Deforestation reducing monsoon rainfall in India: new study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/deforestation-reducing-monsoon-rainfall-in-india-new-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/deforestation-reducing-monsoon-rainfall-in-india-new-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Sep 2016 10:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/09/01191927/Forests_and_Valley_of_Uttarakhand_India-520x292.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=189054</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, India, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Climate Change, Deforestation, Environment, Forests, Precipitation, Rainforests, Water, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Large-scale conversion of forests to crop lands is disrupting India’s rainfall, a new study has found. Around 80 percent of India’s annual rainfall comes from the Indian summer monsoon, spanning from June to September. But deforestation over the past few decades has caused summer monsoon to weaken, resulting in a considerable decline in rainfall, concludes [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Large-scale conversion of forests to crop lands is disrupting India’s rainfall, a new study has found. Around 80 percent of India’s annual rainfall comes from the Indian summer monsoon, spanning from June to September. But deforestation over the past few decades has caused summer monsoon to weaken, resulting in a considerable decline in rainfall, concludes the study published in Scientific Reports. “Monsoon is believed to be a product of large scale atmospheric circulation,” co-author Subimal Ghosh, associate professor at the Department of Civil Engineering in IIT Bombay, told Mongabay. “But our study found that there are local factors such as changes in land use and land cover that lead to changes in monsoon rainfall. These local changes are in our hands, and because of them there has been a significant reduction in rainfall over two major regions, the Ganga basin and northeast India. That is really alarming.” Large-scale deforestation in India has resulted in a decline in monsoon rainfall in India, especially in north and northeast India, a new study has found. Photo by BMC Ecology, from Flickr, Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Ghosh and his colleagues found that both forest cover and monsoon rainfall declined considerably between the years 1980-1990 and 2000-2010. The reduction in rainfall was especially pronounced in north and northeast India. The study’s models also showed that the large-scale conversion of forests to crop lands had resulted in a decline in evapotranspiration, a process by which moisture is transferred from soil and plants to the atmosphere. “When there&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/deforestation-reducing-monsoon-rainfall-in-india-new-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-189054</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Peruvian Amazon will get wetter and experience more severe floods, threatening wildlife</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/02/peruvian-amazon-will-get-wetter-and-experience-more-severe-floods-threatening-wildlife/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2016/02/peruvian-amazon-will-get-wetter-and-experience-more-severe-floods-threatening-wildlife/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Feb 2016 18:01:38 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mike Gaworecki]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/02/02175937/DSC01307-440x330.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Climate Change, Drought, Environment, Forests, Global Warming, Impact Of Climate Change, Precipitation, Rainforests, Rivers, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The impacts of climate change on the Amazon basin is a subject of much scrutiny due to the region’s rich biodiversity and the important role of rainforests in maintaining a stable global climate. A growing body of evidence shows that rising global temperatures are having a direct hydrological impact on the Amazon, leading to more [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The impacts of climate change on the Amazon basin is a subject of much scrutiny due to the region’s rich biodiversity and the important role of rainforests in maintaining a stable global climate. A growing body of evidence shows that rising global temperatures are having a direct hydrological impact on the Amazon, leading to more prolonged and severe droughts in some areas while causing increased precipitation and floods in others. One 2013 study, for instance, found that the Amazon River’s hydrological cycle has become more extreme over the past two decades, with a far wetter wet season across much of the basin even as the southern Amazon rainforest experienced severe droughts in 2005 and again in 2010. A study released last year predicted that those will probably not be the last droughts to hit the Amazon in the near future. Researchers found that climate models project great increases in the frequency and area of drought in the Amazon in coming decades. But increased droughts aren’t the only likely impact of rising global temperatures, as the models also projected increases in extreme precipitation. To put it simply, the rainy season will get wetter and the dry season will get drier throughout much of the Amazon. Now a new study expands on these findings by examining climate change’s direct hydrological impact at the subregional scale, specifically in the Western Amazon. Baby taricaya turtle. Photo by Claudia Véliz-Rosas. In a paper published last month in the journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers predict a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/02/peruvian-amazon-will-get-wetter-and-experience-more-severe-floods-threatening-wildlife/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-178733</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Pollution from fossil fuels decreased rainfall in Central America</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2015/02/pollution-from-fossil-fuels-decreased-rainfall-in-central-america/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2015/02/pollution-from-fossil-fuels-decreased-rainfall-in-central-america/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Feb 2015 17:34:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2015/02/pollution-from-fossil-fuels-decreased-rainfall-in-central-america/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Belize and Central America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Air Pollution, Caves, Climate Change, Disasters, Drought, Environment, Food, Fossil Fuels, Global Environmental Crisis, Global Warming, Green, History, Industry, Pollution, Precipitation, and Science]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Jungle in Belize. New research finds Belize has been drying out for over a century, likely due to pollution from burning fossil fuels in the northern hemisphere which has left to a shift in the a vital precipitation belt along the equator. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Fossil fuel pollution may have caused a southern [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Jungle in Belize. New research finds Belize has been drying out for over a century, likely due to pollution from burning fossil fuels in the northern hemisphere which has left to a shift in the a vital precipitation belt along the equator. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Fossil fuel pollution may have caused a southern shift in a vital rainfall belt across Central America, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience, potentially leading to drier conditions and droughts in some northern tropical countries. Using data from a single stalagmite in a Belizean cave, the researchers were able to create an accurate record of both rainfall and temperature for the last 450 years and show a likely change in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a precipitation belt around the equator. &#8220;The research presents strong evidence that industrial sulfate emissions have shifted this important rainfall belt, particularly over the last 100 years,&#8221; said lead author, Harriet Ridley, from Durham University. According to the research, the shift began around the time of the Industrial Revolution in the northern hemisphere. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), known to sailors as the doldrums, girdles the planet near the equator. However, it likes heat best. This is important, because when industry in the northern hemisphere ramped up in the mid 19th Century, it spewed tons of sulfate emissions into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Sulfate emissions have a regional cooling effect by reflecting light back into the atmosphere and increasing cloud cover. Scientists believe that when&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2015/02/pollution-from-fossil-fuels-decreased-rainfall-in-central-america/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-24118</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tropical deforestation could disrupt rainfall globally</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/12/tropical-deforestation-could-disrupt-rainfall-globally/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/12/tropical-deforestation-could-disrupt-rainfall-globally/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Dec 2014 17:36:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2014/12/22174251/amazon_201190-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2014/12/tropical-deforestation-could-disrupt-rainfall-globally/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon and Congo Basin]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Cattle, Climate Change, Deforestation, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Environmental Services, Forests, Green, Precipitation, Rainforests, Ranching, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Soy, Tropical Forests, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Large-scale deforestation in the tropics could drive significant and widespread shifts in rainfall distribution and temperatures, potentially affecting agriculture both locally and far from where forest loss is occurring, concludes a study published today in Nature Climate Change. The research, authored by Deborah Lawrence and Karen Vandecar of the University of Virginia, is based on [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Large-scale deforestation in the tropics could drive significant and widespread shifts in rainfall distribution and temperatures, potentially affecting agriculture both locally and far from where forest loss is occurring, concludes a study published today in Nature Climate Change. The research, authored by Deborah Lawrence and Karen Vandecar of the University of Virginia, is based on a review of several studies that measured and modeled the impacts of tropical forest clearance in different geographies and at various scales. It finds that overall rainfall does not diminish with deforestation, but precipitation patterns shift. Areas that now benefit from rainfall may be deprived should deforestation reach certain thresholds. Other zones would become wetter. Under extreme deforestation scenarios, disappearance of the Amazon rainforest would reduce rainfall in the American Midwest, Northwest and South at key growing times, while increasing winter precipitation along the eastern seaboard. Complete deforestation in Central Africa would also hit the American heartland as well as the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Northwest, Ukraine, and Southern Europe, but boost rainfall in China, western Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Complete loss of forests in Southeast Asia would affect rainfall in China and India. NCAR water vapor and precipitation simulation &#8220;Tropical deforestation delivers a double whammy to the climate—and to farmers,” said Lawrence, the study’s lead author, in a statement. &#8220;Most people know that climate change is a dangerous global problem, and that it’s caused by pumping carbon into the atmosphere. But it turns out that removing forests alters moisture and air flow,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/12/tropical-deforestation-could-disrupt-rainfall-globally/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-24312</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Next big idea in forest conservation? The &#8216;double-edged sword&#8217; of democracy</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/07/next-big-idea-in-forest-conservation-the-double-edged-sword-of-democracy/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/07/next-big-idea-in-forest-conservation-the-double-edged-sword-of-democracy/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Jul 2014 16:52:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Dr Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
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											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Asia, Indonesia, and Uganda]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Community Development, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Deforestation, Environment, Forestry, Forests, Governance, Green, Innovation, Interviews, Parks, Politics, Precipitation, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Science, Solutions, Sustainability, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Forest Management, Threats To Rainforests, Traditional People, Tropical Forests, and Weather]]>
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											<description>
							<![CDATA[Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&#038;A with Dr. Douglas Sheil The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda hosts nearly half of the world&#8217;s remaining mountain gorillas. Photo courtesy of Douglas Sheil. Dr. Douglas Sheil considers himself an ecologist, but his research includes both conservation and management of tropical forests. Currently teaching at the Norwegian University of [&#8230;]]]>
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							<![CDATA[Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&#038;A with Dr. Douglas Sheil The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda hosts nearly half of the world&#8217;s remaining mountain gorillas. Photo courtesy of Douglas Sheil. Dr. Douglas Sheil considers himself an ecologist, but his research includes both conservation and management of tropical forests. Currently teaching at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) Sheil has authored and co-authored over 200 publications including scholarly articles, books, and popular articles on the subject. &#8220;I think one of the most important recurring discussions I have with students and young researchers concerns the balance between our science and the value-driven &#8216;normative&#8217; content of what we do,&#8221; Sheil told mongabay.com. &#8220;What I believe we need is a more humble, critical and evidence-based approach to forest conservation&#8212;knowing what works where and when, and learning what we can from shortcomings and failures.&#8221; Douglas in the forest in Borneo. Photo courtesy of: M. van Heist. After receiving a doctorate in Tropical Ecology from Oxford University in 1996, Sheil worked as a consultant for many years before joining the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR ), where he developed and led ecological, conservation and community-based studies with local and international collaborators, mostly in East Kalimantan and West Papua. In 2008, Sheil was hired by the Wildlife Conservation Society, and seconded to Mbarara University of Science and Technology to direct a research station located within the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a World Heritage site, in Uganda. &#8220;Another game-changer,&#8221; Sheil says from his experiences with international&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/07/next-big-idea-in-forest-conservation-the-double-edged-sword-of-democracy/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-24986</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>NASA picture reveals shocking impact of California&#8217;s drought</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/01/nasa-picture-reveals-shocking-impact-of-californias-drought/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2014/01/nasa-picture-reveals-shocking-impact-of-californias-drought/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Jan 2014 22:42:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2014/01/nasa-picture-reveals-shocking-impact-of-californias-drought/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[California and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Drought, Environment, Green, Precipitation, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Animation: The 2013-2014 California drought. By Rhett A. Butler using NASA imagery. A pair of satellite images released this week by NASA reveal the shocking impact of California&#8217;s drought, which is now entering its third year. The images, captured January 18, 2013 and January 18, 2014 with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Animation: The 2013-2014 California drought. By Rhett A. Butler using NASA imagery. A pair of satellite images released this week by NASA reveal the shocking impact of California&#8217;s drought, which is now entering its third year. The images, captured January 18, 2013 and January 18, 2014 with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show a steep decline in snow cover across the Sierra Nevada, Coast Range, and Cascade Mountains. Both the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys appeared parched, with a noticeable drop in greenness. &#8220;The most striking difference between the two years is the amount of snow cover on mountains. The Sierra Nevada range has very little snow, and Coast Range and Cascade Mountains are almost completely snow free,&#8221; said NASA in a post on the Image of the Day section of its Earth Observatory web site. &#8220;California gets a third of its water supply from mountain snow, but with warm, dry weather, little snow has accumulated.&#8221; &#8220;Less striking at first glance, but just as telling is the condition of the vegetation west of the Sierra Nevada. In 2013—a year into the drought—the central valley was green with growing crops. The coastal hills were also green from winter rain. In 2014, everything west of the forested mountains is brown. Even irrigated agriculture in the center of the state appears to be limited compared to 2013.&#8221; NASA posted the images just days after California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency due to low rainfall. Brown&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/01/nasa-picture-reveals-shocking-impact-of-californias-drought/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-25780</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Amazon deforestation could cause droughts in California</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2013/11/amazon-deforestation-could-cause-droughts-in-california/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2013/11/amazon-deforestation-could-cause-droughts-in-california/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Nov 2013 20:34:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.mongabaydev.co.uk/2013/11/amazon-deforestation-could-cause-droughts-in-california/</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, California, Latin America, South America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Deforestation, Drought, Ecosystem Services, El Nino, Environment, Environmental Services, Forests, Green, Precipitation, Rainforests, and Weather]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Complete deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by up to 20 percent and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by up to 50 percent, suggests new research published in the Journal of Climate. The study is based on high resolution computer modeling that stripped the Amazon of its forest cover [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Complete deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by up to 20 percent and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by up to 50 percent, suggests new research published in the Journal of Climate. The study is based on high resolution computer modeling that stripped the Amazon of its forest cover and assessed the potential impact on wind and precipitation patterns. While the scenario is implausible, it reveals the global nature of the ecological services afforded by the world&#8217;s largest rainforest. &#8220;The big point is that Amazon deforestation will not only affect the Amazon — it will not be contained. It will hit the atmosphere and the atmosphere will carry those responses,&#8221; said first author David Medvigy of Princeton University in a statement. &#8220;It just so happens that one of the locations feeling that response will be one we care about most agriculturally. If you change the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, where most of the irrigation for California&#8217;s Central Valley comes from, then by this study deforestation of the Amazon could have serious consequences for the food supply of the United States.&#8221; Reduced rainfall and snowpack could also increase regional vulnerability to fire and affect energy production since much of California and Washington&#8217;s power comes from hydroelectric dams. (Left) This figure shows the change (in millimeters per day) in daily average precipitation after total Amazon deforestation compared to before deforestation. The pink to dark-pink range indicates a drop in precipitation of up 1.6 mm less&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2013/11/amazon-deforestation-could-cause-droughts-in-california/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-26115</doi>				</item>
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