Scientists Fear Amazon May Face Early Destruction (2/3)

Nepstad says a widespread death of trees in the Amazon of the scale he is predicting would release up to 26 billion tons of carbon, or as much as the whole planet produces in about two and a half years.

Antonio Nobre of Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon says signs of a destructive climate cycle are already detectable.

"What we are seeing already for example in southern Brazil, which is in the wake of the river of water vapor coming from the Amazon, is already a drying up. We have analyzed just ten years but you see clearly a tendency of drying."

Christiane Ehringhaus, who studies the Amazon for the Center for International Forestry Research, says she would not be surprised if the Amazon's future is bleaker than previously expected. She says the cycle of drying may have contributed to, and been intensified by, widespread forest fires in 2005.

"You saw fires in areas of the Amazon that hadn't been detected even as flammable in previous models. So you saw forest fires that are undetectable from space that do tremendous damage and dry up the forest for subsequent fires."

参考译文：

Nepstad称他所预测的亚马逊树木大规模的死亡将会导致260亿吨碳释放（到大气中），这与整个地球大约两年半内产生的碳相当。

巴西国家亚马逊研究所的安东尼奥诺布雷称：破坏性的气候循环已经初露端倪。

巴西国家亚马逊研究所的安东尼奥诺布雷称：破坏性的气候循环已经初露端倪。以我们已经看到的巴西南部为例，由亚马逊的水汽形成的河流将要干涸了。尽管我们只是分析了10年时间，你还是可以清楚的看到干旱的趋势。

国际森林研究中心从事研究亚马逊工作的Christiane Ehringhaus说：如果亚马逊的未来比以前预想的还要令人沮丧的话，她并不会感到吃惊。她称干旱的循环引起了2005年大面积森林大火，而大火又加重了干旱。

你可以看到亚马逊区域的大火不能被探测到，你会在那些预测的火情模型中甚至不易燃的地方也发现的大火。所以那些不能被卫星探测到的森林大火带来巨大破坏，使森林干燥进而引发随后的大火。