Climate change feeds climate changes
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Abstract
Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com their stomata open to acquire further CO2, or to produce leaves with lower stomata density, decreasing evapotranspiration in the process. At continental scales, particularly in tropical and equatorial latitudes, this phenomenon can cause significant changes in water biogeochemical cycle, shifts in rainfall patterns, including projections of freshwater availability. This physiological process (i.e. water vapor loss by the plant to the atmosphere via the opening and closure of leaves’ microscopic stomatal apertures) when taken into account over a vast ecosystem such as the Amazon Forest fills “aerial rivers”. Aerial rivers are huge water volumes transported through the atmosphere by air masses and trade winds. In South America, the Amazon forest feeds one of these rivers, which are directed towards southeastern Brazil by the Andes mountain range. Discharges of such aerial system from the east of the Andes to the subtropics during the last wet seasons varied between 23 to 10 Gt H2O. Day-1, a volume comparable to the Amazon River discharge [9]. This amount represents about 3.4 trillion liters per year that appear to be transported to South American’s south. If plants in the Amazon forest will not keep their stomata open for as long as they have in the last 10,000 years in order to fulfill their CO2 needs, the daily water loss may be severely decreased under future higher atmospheric pCO2. Adding insult to injury, tropical deforestation is also contributing to further decrease in evapotranspiration rates [1]. Increasing demand for new agricultural areas along the frontiers of the Amazon system and illegal logging in the interior of the forest continues. The former is now further fueled by the above mentioned droughts in other parts of southeastern South America and the consequent reduction in productivity of local produce. Consequently, local (ex. deforestation) together with global (ex. physiological reduction of evapotranspiration due to higher atm pCO2) factors have been regarded as significant processes associated with increase in atmospheric drought and shifts in rain patterns [8]. In countries such as Brazil that have its energetic matrix mainly grounded in hydroelectric and thermoelectric alternatives, droughts resulted in blackouts [2] and a significant increase in consumption of fossil fuels. Due to the severe reduction in water volume across hydroelectric reservoirs in drought-affected areas, thermoelectric alternatives were put to work at their maximum capacity, immediately increasing CO2 emissions. In the last year alone, after consistent lower precipitation seasons struck Southeastern Brazil, thermoelectric production from coal and natural gas grew more than 40%, releasing more than 6 billions of kg.h-1 of additional CO2 into the atmosphere. This capitalization of increment in CO2 production can induce a climate change feedback. Results from mathematical models developed from empirical data on effect of different and increasing atmospheric pCO2 on plant evapotranspiration reinforce the existence of a consistent shift in the magnitude of terrestrial evapotranspiration occurring in the last 150 years [10]. Lammertsma et al. [8] showed that an increment of 100 ppm of atm CO2 resulted in a 34% (±12%) reduction in maximum, diffusive water stomatal conductance (i.e. a measure of evapotranspiration), supporting scenarios of surface temperature increases and more droughts arising from reduced evaporative cooling [10]. The drought-energy productionincrease in pCO2 emissions feedback mechanism acts on plant evapotranspiration. Further reducing atmospheric humidity, precipitation rates, water reservoir levels, hydrothermal energy production, and then increase the need of more instantaneous fossil fuel based sources of energy. This process reinforces the prediction of severe droughts in the next 30-90 years, widespread over many areas with regional and global geopolitical importance [11]. Should be highlighted that this scenario is connected with aquatic and underwater environments that play key role in the climate. Dimethylsulphide (DMS) from marine environments are a major source of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the clean oceanic atmosphere. Alga, despite be recognized as O2 producers, both in planktonic and benthic communities, synthesize DMS precursor dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DSMP). Among these primary producers rhodolith beds (maerl) standout as abundant coastal bioengineers, biofactory of carbonates, and amongst the largest macroalgal DMSP producers. High CO2 concentration Volume 2 Issue 1 2018