Flying Rivers

Jan Rocha at the Guardian writes about the drought in South America. The Amazon Rain Forest is important to the entire planet, but deforestation for agriculture is threatening its existence. Climate warming expert Jose Marenga says the forest is necessary because adds humidity to the atmosphere that turns into rain elsewhere. This evaporation of moisture is called a flying river, "massive volumes of vapour that rise from the rainforest, travel west...."

Rocha emphasizes that global warming and deforestation threaten to cause severe drought, "without trees there would be no water, and without water there is no food."

A leading climate scientist Antonia Nobre spoke with the journalist from the Guardian. “A big tree with a crown 20 metres across evaporates up to 300 litres a day, whereas one square metre of ocean evaporates exactly one square metre,” he said. “One square metre of forest can contain eight or 10 metres of leaves, so it evaporates eight or 10 times more than the ocean. This flying river, which rises into the atmosphere in the form of vapour, is bigger than the biggest river on the Earth.”

Up until reading this article, I had not known the phrase flying rivers.  I have already been fascinated with rivers on the landscape and underground rivers, but this news further captured my artistic imagination.  Rivers flow within us. They flow under, through, and above us.