RAINFOREST ROLE IN DRIVING PLANETARY WINDS

THE RAINFOREST IS MORE THAN A LOCAL RESOURCE: STUDIES INDICATED RAINFOREST ROLE IN DRIVING PLANETARY WINDS.

 

The well worn physical concept of wind creation can be found in any middle grade book: Hot air rises, and cold air below moves in, thereby creating the vector and force for wind creation.

This explanation as scientifically sound as it may be, is not all that there seems to be to the complicated process of wind creation.  

New theories are taking centre stage in the study of how geographical and arboreal masses play a role in wind creation.  Condensation of moisture, an easily observable phenomenon over large forests, seem to be playing just as relevant a role.  Evaporation of moisture, as it rises from the trees, causes a lowering of the temperature and reduction in barometric pressure, thereby driving air into the vacuum and initiating the force that creates the winds.  

Physicists and botanists are now asking themselves the question: what will happen if all the arboreal masses, such as the rainforest are deforested?  There is the ominous reply that we could very well lose the engine that produces the winds....and that would mean that the rain brought in by the winds would also fail to come. 

Scientists are now asking that such pressure gradient changes be investigated to prove exactly how large a role the forests have. However some scientists believe that the role they play is very large, whereas other do not.  In effect, most scientists are agreed that the principles described are correct, but not all agree as to the magnitude of the effect.

In fact, current metereological models do not take into account such effect, and to some scientists this could be the very reason why both hurricane and monsoon models are woefully inaccurate.

Nobody doubts that forest play a role, but this is the first attempt at verifying and quantifying how this recycling process whips up the winds that sucks moist ocean air across continental masses.

This also challenges, ominously, the current theories that indicate the loss of such rainforests would only impact rainfall by at maximum of 30% of yearly amounts.  If the new theory proves right, the loss of rainfall could be as high as a staggering 90% of yearly totals.

The silver lining in all this is that loss of rainforest could be remedied by new plantings on a large scale.  In effect such impact has already been proven.  In India a large plantation of half a million mango trees was planted in a region close to desertification.  Since then, the region has seen the creation of an incredible microclimate, with rains and bonification of the soil.

Source: Adapted from the article in the New Scientist - author: Pearce / 1.31.13