Amazon’s flying water vapour rivers bring rain to Brazil

As devastating drought spreads across much of the globe, British-born pilot Gerard Moss flies above the Amazon rainforest to show how its “flying rivers” — humid air currents — bring rain to Brazil and South America.

Aboard his single-engine Embraer 721 aircraft, Moss, a naturalised Brazilian, was on a 45-minute flight from Brasilia to Goiania, capital of the central state of Goias.

“Climate change is taking its toll. The United States is going through its worst drought in half a century, Russia is also reeling from drought and in India monsoon rains have for years been irregular,” he told AFP.

“Brazil is less affected because we have the world’s biggest tropical forest, which helps regulate the climate.”

Deforestation is also a factor. With logging and agriculture shrinking Brazil’s rainforests, there are fewer trees to release the water vapour that creates these flying rivers.

The flying rivers travel from the Amazon toward the Andes, which act as a natural barrier and redirect huge vapour masses toward the centre—west, southeast and south of Brazil as well as to the north of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname.

“Peru also receives some of that water, but were it not for the Cordillera, it would surely receive it all,” Moss said.

During the Goiania-bound flight, Moss monitored an indicator that measures air humidity and helps locate the flying rivers.

“Very few people realise that apart from CO2 capturing, a single tree is capable of sending in the atmosphere more than 1,000 litres a day,” he said.

“The entire Amazon basin is a supplier of fresh water for many other parts of Brazil and the northern parts of Argentina, so it is important for the climate and economy of Brazil,” he added.

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