May 28, 2010
While working on the Teacher Guide for Seymour’s upcoming book, TROPICAL RAINFORESTS, we came across this US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data on the effects of deforestation on average surface temperatures. Two 100-year simulations were carried out with CFS (Climate Forecasting System): 1) a current climate control simulation {CONTROL} and 2) a deforestation simulation {DEFOREST} in which tropical rainforest in the Amazon region was replaced with perennial ground cover.
The results suggest that the impact of Amazon deforestation would be a warmer and drier Amazon, as well as a warmer tropical Pacific and tropical North Atlantic, with the caveat that CFS is not specifically designed for long climate change simulations.
If you are interested in more detail about this study and others like it, you can find it here: Climate Test Bed Joint Seminar Series.
Deforestation and other words related to life in the Tropical Rainforest, such as Canopy, Emergent Layer, Epiphyte and Understory, are all defined for children in Seymour’s online Science Dictionary. As each new book comes out, we will be adding all relevant terms, with images, to this digital information source for kids. This is all free content, so please introduce it to any children you know who are interested in learning more about the amazing world around them.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
