>>> > Try http://www.whrc.org/southamerica/drought_sim/results.htm > >> It seems to me that the Indy has hyped the report and you have hyped >> the Indy article :-) > > In my defense, I did just say "Amazon very vulnerable", not "gone > tomorrow!". But I was admittedly more upset by the journalism than the > report it described (thanks for that link, and thanks to WH for the very > nice web site).
I take that back. I now see, having read RealClimate, that there were two articles in the Independent, neither of which was based on the research which was described in the I posted. That first appeared at the beginning of this year's rainy season after one year of drought. Now that rainy season is over, and it again produced no rain, the WHRC scientist are very concerned that the ITCZ has shifted permanently. That is the concerns that the Independent is reporting. So my previous remark: >> OTOH we don't know that Lean and/or Pearce have not spoken to the >> Woods Hole scientists and got a more alarming picture from them. seems to be correct. (Should I laugh or cry :-?) Here are what the scientists say: ' Dr Nepstead [from WHRC] expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert."' 'Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that "the lock has broken" on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction."' In the second article http://www.ecoearth.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=58636 which is also a report of recent meetings. It is summed up by this remark: 'This year, says Otavio Luz Castello, the water is draining away even faster than the last one - and there are still more than three months of the dry season to go. He adds: "I am very concerned."' So it is not you who is panicking needlessly. It is the Brazilian scientists who are panicking based on the facts. Cheers, Alastair. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
