Climate Change Feeds Climate Changes

acquire further CO 2 , or to produce leaves with lower stomata density, decreasing evapotranspiration in the process.At continental scales, particularly in tropical and equatorial latitudes, this phenomenon can cause significant changes in water biogeochemical cycle, shifts in rainfall patterns, including projections of freshwater availability.This physiological process (i.e.water vapor loss by the plant to the atmosphere via the opening and closure of leaves' microscopic stomatal apertures) when taken into account over a vast ecosystem such as the Amazon Forest fills "aerial rivers".Aerial rivers are huge water volumes transported through the atmosphere by air masses and trade winds.In South America, the Amazon forest feeds one of these rivers, which are directed towards southeastern Brazil by the Andes mountain range.Discharges of such aerial system from the east of the Andes to the subtropics during the last wet seasons varied between 23 to 10 Gt H 2 O. Day -1 , a volume comparable to the Amazon River discharge.9 This amount represents about 3.4 trillion liters per year that appear to be transported to South American's south.If plants in the Amazon forest will not keep their stomata open for as long as they have in the last 10,000 years in order to fulfill their CO 2 needs, the daily water loss may be severely decreased under future higher atmospheric pCO 2 .Adding insult to injury, tropical deforestation is also contributing to further decrease in evapotranspiration rates. 1 Increasing demand for new agricultural areas along the frontiers of the Amazon system and illegal logging in the interior of the forest continues.The former is now further fueled by the above mentioned droughts in other parts of southeastern South America and the consequent reduction in productivity of local produce.Consequently, local (ex.deforestation) together with global (ex.physiological reduction of evapotranspiration due to higher atm pCO 2 ) factors have been regarded as significant processes associated with increase in atmospheric drought and shifts in rain patterns.8 In countries such as Brazil that have its energetic matrix mainly grounded in hydroelectric and thermoelectric alternatives, droughts resulted in blackouts 2 and a significant increase in consumption of fossil fuels.Due to the severe reduction in water volume across hydroelectric reservoirs in droughtaffected areas, thermoelectric alternatives were put to work at their maximum capacity, immediately increasing CO 2 emissions.In the last year alone, after consistent lower precipitation seasons struck