The pollution plume produced in the city of Manaus, northwest Brazil, tends to drift towards pristine areas of the Amazon rainforest, elevating up to 50 times the concentration of tiny, harmful particles in parts of the forest with near pre-industrial atmospheric conditions.
The pollution plume produced in the city of Manaus, northwest Brazil, tends to drift towards pristine areas of the Amazon rainforest, elevating up to 50 times the concentration of tiny, harmful particles in parts of the forest with near pre-industrial atmospheric conditions.
This is one of the key findings of a team of researchers from the United States, Brazil and Germany studying how humans have affected the Amazon's atmosphere.
They analysed how pollution pumped out in Manaus alters the life cycle of aerosols and clouds and how these elements interact in the atmosphere, affecting rainfall in the Amazon forest.
By doing so, they also found that pollution is increasing the formation of particles that can cause severe cardiopulmonary diseases.
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo credit: rrubra via Pixabay
