Climatic shift in patterns of shallow clouds over the Amazon

Details Climatic shift in patterns of shallow clouds over the Amazon Climatic shift in patterns of shallow clouds over the Amazon

Dec 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004georl..3124212c&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 31, Issue 24, CiteID L24212

Mathematics

Logic

10

Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Biosphere/Atmosphere Interactions, Hydrology: Anthropogenic Effects, Global Change: Atmosphere (0315, 0325), Global Change: Remote Sensing, Global Change: Water Cycles (1836)

Scientific paper

The Amazon rain forest has experienced dramatic changes in the past 50 years due to active deforestation. As of 2001, 15% of the 4,000,000 km2 Brazilian Amazon has been deforested [Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), 2003]; each year, agricultural exploitation claims an estimated 13,000 km2 of tropical forest [Achard et al., 2002]. In this paper we investigate the climatic effects caused by the observed change of the physical characteristics of the land surface (i.e., increased surface albedo, decreased root-zone depth, decreased surface roughness and decreased leaf-area index). More precisely, we examine the spatial correspondence of shallow cumulus clouds with deforestation. Through the creation of an 8-year record of thrice daily shallow cumulus cloud cover at 1 km resolution from multi-spectral satellite imagery, we quantitatively show the existence of a significant climatic shift in shallow cloudiness patterns associated with deforestation. This shift manifests itself as an enhancement of shallow cumuli over deforested patches, and has potentially important climatic, hydrologic and ecological implications.

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