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Increased dry-season length over southern Amazonia in recent decades and its implication for future climate projection

2013; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 110; Issue: 45 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1302584110

1091-6490

Rong Fu, Lei Yin, Wenhong Li, Paola A. Arias, Robert E. Dickinson, Lei Huang, Sudip Chakraborty, Kátia Fernandes, Brant Liebmann, Rosie A. Fisher, Ranga B. Myneni,

Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes

Significance Whether the dry-season length will increase is a central question in determining the fate of the rainforests over Amazonia and the future global atmospheric CO 2 concentration. We show observationally that the dry-season length over southern Amazonia has increased significantly since 1979. We do not know what has caused this change, although it resembles the effects of anthropogenic climate change. The global climate models that were presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report seem to substantially underestimate the variability of the dry-season length. Such a bias implies that the future change of the dry-season length, and hence the risk of rainforest die-back, may be underestimated by the projections of these models.