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Revolutionary new theory overturns modern meteorology with claim that forests move rain

› Posted April 5, 2009, by Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com

Largely ignored by scientific community, new theory could change how future generations view forests

Ayers rock region of Australia. Makarieva and Gorshkov's theory claims to explain why the Australian outback is so dry. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Two Russian scientists, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, have published a revolutionary theory that turns modern meteorology on its head, positing that forests—and their capacity for condensation—are actually the main driver of winds rather than temperature. While this model has widespread implications for numerous sciences, none of them are larger than the importance of conserving forests, which are shown to be crucial to 'pumping' precipitation from one place to another. The theory explains, among other mysteries, why deforestation around coastal regions tends to lead to drying in the interior.

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"An actively evaporating natural rainforest will work as a pump continuously supporting lower air pressure above its canopy and thus drawing moist air from the [the ocean]" say Makarieva and Gorshkov. If the rainforest is cut off or destroyed, water will simply stop being pumped from the ocean and will cease inland, leading to desertification.

But how does this new model, radical in its emphasis, play out against observations of actual weather patterns?

Makarieva and Gorshkov say that their theory "is significant enough to numerically account for the observed wind velocities in all observable circulation patterns, from large scale stationary continental patterns like the Amazon forest pump to spatially and temporarily concentrated patterns like hurricanes and tornadoes"....

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