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Title: Poor Amazon Rains Linked To Brazil Deforestation

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1649...

For decades, the dry season in the Amazon rainforest has been getting drier.
A new study, published on Tuesday, found that about 75% of the decrease in
rainfall is directly linked to deforestation. From a report: The study, in
Nature Communications, also found that tree loss was partly responsible for
increased heat across the Amazon. Since 1985, the hottest days in the Amazon
have warmed by about 2 degrees Celsius. About 16% of that increase, the
researchers found, was because of deforestation. Marco Franco, an assistant
professor at the University of Sao Paulo who led the study, said he was
surprised by the findings. "We were expecting to see deforestation as a
driver, but not this much," he said. "It tells us a lot about what's going on
in the biome." The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet
because its trees help to regulate the global climate by absorbing planet-
warming carbon dioxide. But decades of large-scale logging and burning in the
forest have recently flipped that script, and parts of the region have become
net producers of greenhouse gases.

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