A mega drought is effecting the western Amazon rainforest. The land size of the drought is about twice the size of California. The drought has been going on since 2005, reports from NASA confirms the data. Recurrences of droughts every few years and other associated damage  to the rainforests in the Amazon over the past decade, suggests these rainforests are showing the first signs of impending large-scale degradation due to global warming or climate change.

Scientists found that the summer of 2005, more than 270,000 square miles of virgin, old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an all-encompassing, severe drought. This mega drought caused extensive changes to the forest canopy. The changes which can be seen by NASA satellites suggest the death of branches and tree falls, especially among the older, larger, more vulnerable canopy trees that cover the forest.  

Even after the drought, the vegetation and trees still showed damage and had not recovered through the wet years and still were sickly when the next major drought hit 4 years later. The drought is being connected with the long-term warming of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures. The same climate event that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia.

With the climate change increasing the prospects of the rainforests recovering is unclear and the reduction of the rainforest will affect the entire world and all eco-systems. The number and the magnitude of droughts in the amazon in the past ten years is more than the area has experienced in the last century.

The entire world depends on the health of the rainforests, without the rain forests cleaning our air we will become a dead planet. We all need to become more aware of our carbon foot prints and demand that all countries all around the world reduce their carbon foot prints and aim to become a world that is not depended on oil. We have the know-how to correct our environmental problems, our problem is, and as a society and a species we would rather put wealth and money over health, livability and a healthy planet.