Ilan Koren: If you look on satellite images over the Amazon, over most of South America, during the dry season, you’ll see many days that you cannot see the surface due to the presence of the smoke.
Atmospheric scientist Ilan Koren is with the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Amazon smoke, he said, is mostly due to man-made forest fires. The likelihood for natural fires in the Amazon is very low. Using NASA satellite images, Koren compared clouds with and without the smoke. He found that this smoke slows the formation of clouds and rainfall.
Ilan Koren: And we see very dramatic differences.
Koren said clouds generally cool the planet by reflecting sunlight. But dark particles of smoke, called aerosols, from the Amazon fires absorb more sunlight, and heat up.
Ilan Koren: And therefore clouds will form less. The net effect of the aerosols due to suppressing clouds would be more warming. So it’s a very complicated system.
What’s more, the smoke can change where the rain falls.
Ilan Koren: The same cloud that naturally would precipitate over the forest now can form away from the forest, and therefore it can change the whole hydrological cycle of the Amazon basin.
Our thanks to NASA‘s Terra Mission, helping us better understand and protect our home planet.
Our thanks to:
Ilan Koren
Weizmann Institute of Science
Rehovot, Israel
Poor poor little helpless five billion year old planet. Any little disruption will make it fall like a delicate house of cards. Boohoo! This is science?
I like the IPCC’ science; precaution. Too funny.
History will laugh at human monkeys thinking they can melt planets with SUV gas, plant food and one of the building blocks of life: CO2.
God help us.
Any REAL scientists out there?
Not these paid consultants in lab coats smiling for the picture and laughing all the way to the bank.
You can’t see that effects are not causes?
“Science has an answer for every question it is asked. However, science reserves the right to change that answer should additional data becomes available.â€
And 23 years after the silly predictions from the IPCC, we have Bush leaving office and leaving us with the coldest year of the 21rst century.
You fools in lab coats still think it’s the end of the world?
Stop scaring my kids and fire Hansen.
You can’t see that effects are not causes?
“Science has an answer for every question it is asked. However, science reserves the right to change that answer should additional data becomes available.â€
And 23 years after the silly predictions from the IPCC, we have Bush leaving office and leaving us with the coldest year of the 21rst century.
You fools in lab coats still think it’s the end of the world?
Stop scaring my kids and fire Hansen.