Tel Aviv University Study Ties Drop In Amazon Storms To Deforestation 

The ongoing, decades-long deforestation in the Amazon Basin is directly responsible for a reduction in the number of thunderstorms in the area and the amount of territory over which they occur, according to researchers at Tel Aviv University. 

The researchers say this is a surprising finding, given that there has been a global rise in the frequency of such storms due to climate change, and warn that this has created a “dangerous feedback loop” that poses a serious threat to the existence of the forests that produce much of our oxygen and absorb a sizeable proportion of the carbon dioxide we exhale. 

“We estimate that the loss of each megaton of carbon in the Amazon – equivalent to about a million large trees cut down – results in a 10 percent decrease in the number of thunderstorms,” the researchers said. 

To compensate for a lack of information about the thunderstorms in the Amazon Basin over recent decades, the researchers created a statistical model using global weather data collected since 1940 by a European climate center and information from a worldwide network of lightning detection sensors.  

“The Amazon tropical rainforests are the largest in the world and play a critical role in regulating the earth’s climate,” said Prof. Colin Price of the university’s School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, who led the research.

“The rainforests themselves produce their own rain: the trees emit water vapor via evaporation into the air that eventually condenses and forms clouds and rain above the rainforests. Hence, the forests influence the local and regional rainfall,” he said.