Recuperation of the Amazon Forest must be immediate 

[15/11/2006 15:02]

Even though it is not yet possible to link specific events such as tornadoes and floods to major changes observed in the planet's climate, specialists like Antonio Nobre believe that we can no longer afford to wait for unequivocal proof of the causes of certain phenomena. He thinks that scientists have an obligation to warn society about environmental problems. Nobre, a representative of the Inpa (National Research Institute of the Amazon Region - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amaz�nia) in the National Space Research Institute (Inpe) is author of a study showing that the Amazon is a self- regulating system able to capture moisture from the Atlantic Ocean in order to maintain the stability of the climate as well as the regime of rains from South America to the East of the Andes. A doctor in Biogeochemistry, he explains in the following interview the need not only to suspend deforestation of the Amazon Forest but also to recuperate it immediately, otherwise the continent's population will be burdened with what he considers an "unpayable price".

Since the late 1980s, there has been no doubt that pollution cast into the atmosphere, chiefly by wealthy countries, is contributing to global warming. An increase in the frequency of extreme climatic events in the coming decades has also been ascertained. Another given is that deforestation in poorer countries has also contributed significantly to carbon emission, one of the key elements responsible for the greenhouse effect. Based on evidence that the tropical forests also play a key role in stabilising the climate, the Brazilian government presented a proposal to reduce deforestation in return for resources from wealthy countries, at the 12th Conference of the Parties of the Climate Convention, held this November in Kenya. There is consensus among the International community that there is sufficient evidence to affirm that we are undergoing effects of climatic change.

Despite this, one of the arguments used by the United States government so as not be involved in the Kyoto Protocol, an International treaty on the theme, is that there is no scientific certainty concerning the contribution of Earth's temperature increase to causing several "natural" disasters which have taken place in recent years in unexpected places, such as the successive heat waves across Europe, the prolonged drought in the Amazon Region and the sequence of hurricanes along the coast of the Caribbean among others. Their argument is partly supported by the fact that mathematical models used by meteorologists are devised based on a series of historic logs regarding average atmospheric behaviour in the past and are unable to predict specific climatic episodes. In fact, George W. Bush's administration has already advocated in a number of debates that they cannot even be sure of the contribution of pollution to climatic change.

Nobre: The climate is changing very fast. The deforestation had to be ceased at least ten years ago.

Indeed, it is not yet possible to directly link specific events such as floods and tornadoes with the great changes the climate is undergoing. Nonetheless, several specialists have begun to take a more active stance in the debate over the feature, heeding the possible catastrophic consequences of global warming. 

In Brazil, researcher Ant�nio Nobre is of the school that believes that we can no longer afford to wait for unequivocal proof of the causes of certain phenomenon, and that the duty of warning society of the environmental problems lies with the scientists. Nobre, a representative of the Inpa (National Research Institute of the Amazon Region - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amaz�nia) in the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe) is author of a study showing that the Amazon Region is a self-regulating system able to capture moisture from the Atlantic Ocean thereby maintaining the stability of the climate and regime of rains from South America to the East of the Andes. A doctor in Biogeochemistry, he believes that it is not only necessary to suspend deforestation in the Amazon Forest but also to recuperate it immediately otherwise the continent's population will be burdened with what he considers an "unpayable price".

ISA - Is there a polemic concerning the ability of the Amazon forest to capture carbon? What is the forest's role in this sense?

Ant�nio Nobre - More important than discussing whether the Amazon forest is a carbon source or a carbon sink is that it does regulate the quantity of carbonic gas in the atmosphere. The amount of carbonic gas in the atmosphere regulates the climate, the planet's temperature. The temperature regulates the whole water cycle, evaporation from the ocean, rains, moisture shifts etc. There is very strong evidence today that the biosphere - which includes micro-organisms, plants, animals, all living things, including humanity - over the geologic eras since Earth's formation, has been responsible for the climate stability of the planet. More so than surface geological, geophysical or geochemical factors.
So the Amazon forest plays an important role in regulating the planet's climate?

In fact, if I had to put it simply, I'd say the following: imagine the surface of a lake into which you toss a stone. The stone produces an impact, which produces oscillations on the surface, which radiate out in concentric waves which travel out to the edges of the lake. Then it hits the bank, reflects and returns until part of it dissipates. The atmosphere suffers because it is fluid, as gas is a type of fluid. It responds in the same fashion. Waves propagate in the atmosphere yet we do not know where they will end up reflecting. And these effects, or wave propagations, of varying disturbances produce very complex patterns, and this is why they are so difficult to predict�

In relation to climatic changes, is it not possible to predict events and particular effects like hurricanes and droughts?

Specific episodes, I think not. I'm no meteorologist. Meteorologists are the best people to ask and I'm pretty sure they'll say it's not possible.

Even though it's not possible to specify these effects in regulating climate in the Amazon's case, they surely exist?

There are several groups in the world [which study this], but the most prominent is the group at the Hardley Centre in England which created some climatic models at the end of the 1990s, different to the majority produced up to that point, and that incorporate carbon life forms etc. This model shows a vertiginous acceleration in the effects of global warming and the demise of the Amazon by around 2050. But the physical processes are not yet fully understood. These models are adjusted. They create a series of model start-points under different configuration conditions. The model produces a range of responses and they see what the trend of the majority of the responses is. They create several runs of the simulations using the model and say: "80% of the simulations show that the Amazon will heat up and dry out; when it has dried up, the forest will die; then fire takes hold and releases carbon dioxide (CO2) which will then speed up warming, which in turn then accelerates the effect and so on.."

Are you talking about a drought in the Amazon due to the effect of global warming?

Yes. Because there would be heating of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and an intensity in sequences of El Ni�os. When these occur, violently according to records, they bring about drought in a significant proportion of the Amazon and then deformations occur in the circulation over South America: instead of air rising in the Amazon, producing rains, it descends causing drought.

Does this mechanism explain the region's last drought in 2005?

That drought was different. The known drought that caused fires in Roraima in 1998 was produced by El Ni�o, stemming from the Pacific Ocean. In 2005, it was a hot water pool in the Tropical North Atlantic.
Is it fair to say that deforestation in the Amazon can have effects on the climate in the region itself as well as other parts of the world?

It would be very good if the meteorological community presented a full picture of these effects. As there are a number of interesting studies, such as the one stating that the Amazon will become "savannah-like" once 40% of its area has been cleared. The effects of deforestation on the reduction of evapotranspiration of the forest are well known. According to INPE data, if you just take the 17% of clearcutted area in the region, plus 22% of upper canopy destruction due to selective timber extraction - in which up to 30% of this cover is damaged, even if you remove a lesser number of trees - you are compromising the forest's ability as a conditioner.

There are a number of studies showing that deforestation in the Amazon is affecting the Mid-West of the United States, while others indicate an effect in Norway, but now more recent studies have shown that hurricanes in the Caribbean are associated to Amazon deforestation and the intensity of El Ni�os, and vice-versa.

There is a new study by a group of Russian theorists, which is suggesting something revolutionary, that not only will it become savannah-like but that when you wipe out a convection system as powerful as the Amazon, or like the forests of the Congo, in Africa or Siberia in Russia, you invert the direction of atmospheric circulation: The air which blows today from the ocean to the continent will blow from the continent to the ocean. When this takes place, what is left is the Sahara, desert. If what this new theory is suggesting can be proven - and they have presented a very impressive and attractive theoretical foundation, which has a solid grounding on mathematics and physics - we will no longer be talking about becoming savannah-like but also desert-like. Not the Amazon becoming desert, but South America and the East Andes.

In my understanding, in view of what we know to date, it's a given and the whole world agrees, that there are reasons why we should no longer talk about reducing deforestation. This is my stance. In fact, we would need to be replacing destroyed forest. Deforestation should have been zero at least a decade earlier. It's no use saying: "but, it's only 18 thousand square kilometres [deforested]". These are obscene numbers if you consider that South America's hydrologic engine is being destroyed.

Do you think there are already strong indications of climatic change brought about by deforestation?

I'm not sure if I have the right to think that. What I can say quite frankly is that we can't bury our heads in the sand like ostriches. The climate is undergoing accelerated change. How much of this is do to global warming? Perhaps part of it. Who can say? Few people. Perhaps nobody. Global warming is a relatively slow process of transgression. These phenomena taking place in South America, associated to its surrounding oceans are of rapid onset, things are happening now which were predicted to occur from 2020, 2030. 

What do I reckon accounts for the difference? Deforestation. You are removing the hydrologic engine which allows atmospheric air to circulate and moisture transport to occur. This has an effect and must comprise a rougher force than global warming, with a picture of extremely rapid change. As if this weren't enough� There is no effective justification be it legal, ethical, moral, logical to carry on deforestation. We should have left this phase behind.

In a speech given at ISA at the end of 2005, you quoted a study which linked deforestation of the Amazon with the warming of the Atlantic�

The study I quoted has not yet been published but is being finalised. They need to verify, run many scenarios on supercomputers, check the variants of the test components. I took that early step because I saw a correlation of information which coincided. 

First, oceanographers specialising in the Atlantic, during a meeting in Venice in 2005, could not explain Atlantic warming, the hot water pool. 

Global warming produces effects on a time scale incompatible with the emergence of a hot water pool in the Atlantic in 2005. Sometimes, when a quantity of water joins an underwater current, it takes more than a thousand years for any signs to appear in another ocean. The ocean responds slowly. Global warming is a relatively recent effect. So, for an ocean to respond like this, it is possibly to do with a local effect, a direct connection�

Following the deforestation of 40% of the Amazon, how long would the process of becoming savannah-like take? Over a matter of centuries or decades?

This could take place over a period of decades or less. It's taking place at a blistering pace. Look at what is happening. Last year's drought, but that has a different genesis�

But you said it is not yet possible to establish a direct link between that drought, forest change and deforestation. It is not possible to make predictions concerning a specific episode like this�

Regarding this episode, meteorologists themselves are saying that it's linked to the warming of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, they are not making this link, at least the group I cited who are concluding their study, which says that Atlantic warming is related to deforestation. This drought has been widely acknowledged as having resulted from Atlantic warming. This is no longer a point of controversy. The relationship between deforestation and Atlantic warming has not yet become public knowledge, but I am already publicising this because I think it is very serious situation.

How consistent is the hypothesis on the link between deforestation and ocean warming?

We now have 15 years into [the International debate] which would not have been possible if we had waited for scientific certainty over global warming. The discourse circulating at the time was exactly the same as what's happening over the Amazon problem now. 

At the present time there are some uncertainties. There are people from within the community showing that deforestation is, indeed associated to Atlantic warming, which is in turn associated to hurricanes and drought in the Amazon, back-firing. 

There are those saying that deforestation is going to reduce the transport of moisture from the Amazon to the Southeast, to the River Plate Watershed, as I have been saying. Others are saying that it is going to increase the intensity of the storms. 

There is a whole lot of early knowledge ebullient in the scientific community yet there is a significant proportion of this community who are reluctant to go public and make relevant statements because they are not sure yet. Exactly the way it was 15 years ago concerning discussion over global warming.

 But there are a lot of people, my self included, who have decided to go public and say that a whole spectrum of risks do exist. I am convinced by a number of these risks, which we already have knowledge about.

 And we need to do something. We cannot wait until they have cleared the whole of the Amazon and then say: "Oh, now we know the effects of deforestation for sure". Because the cost is too high for society to pay.

It is said that Brazil is a "cradle of splendour", but we are "eternally lying down" in it. We have not yet begun to question. Let's take a world map and check out the other countries around the globe. What other country or continent boasts such an extensive green area, with the rains, the mildness (climatic) that South America has? I have no doubt that what promotes the balance here are the forests. 

Responsibility for the balance is disappearing and is going through a period of transition - without saying that one day it will turn into desert, which remains a matter of controversy - but even if it becomes a Savannah, there will be many more extreme events. Any meteorologist will tell you so. It's not my opinion here. There will be more storms, more tornadoes, more hurricanes. 

Basically we'll be shifting from a situation in which the biosphere maintains an extremely comfortable environment, to a situation of continuous disasters. Mother Nature cannot be held responsible! Because it is we who have destroyed the very system maintaining the atmospheric cycle.

ISA, Oswaldo Braga de Souza.