Effects of land-use change in the Amazon on precipitation are likely underestimated.

ABSTRACT: The Amazon forest enhances precipitation levels regionally as trees take up water from the soil and release it back into the atmosphere through transpiration. Therefore, land-use changes in the Amazon affect precipitation patterns but to what extent remains unclear. Recent studies used hydrological and atmospheric models to estimate the contribution of tree transpiration to precipitation but assumed that precipitation decreases proportionally to the transpired portion of atmospheric moisture. Here, we relaxed this assumption by, first, relating observed hourly precipitation levels to atmospheric column water vapor in a relatively flat study area encompassing a large part of the Amazon. We found that the effect of column water vapor on hourly precipitation was strongly nonlinear, showing a

SUBMITTER: Baudena M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9291838 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature