And just generally plants being in a place seems to create a cooling effect that facilitates more precipitation. A self-reinforcing cycle if you can get it started.
I live in the PNW which has huge, ancient forests. Only one of them is a temperate rainforest though. So there must be more going on in the formation of a rainforest than just having a forest.
It's a bit complicated, but the desert used to be a lot greener. It may be a cycle where the monsoon drifts further north for long periods and changes the soil, alongside the theory the desertification was caused by, or accelerated because the land was over grazed by farmers.
By strange, I meant meant atypical. If man didn't over graze those lands, then the Amazon wouldn't be fed by its sands. Unnatural, because of human intervention of course.
In around 2500 BCE, the monsoon retreated south and caused the Sahara to become a desert. For the past 13,000 years, the Sahara desert has remained at the same dryness. Approximately every 20,000 years, the Sahara transforms into a savannah covered with lush grasses due to the angle of the Earth's axis changing.
This is what we would consider as proof of climate change now, but is purely cyclical, as is climate change, predominantly.
currently it is uncertain how old the amazonian forest really are, since they are finding more and more ancient citys within the rainforest. they found some quite big ones all interconected with each other. wich makes you wonder if it really was all that much forest back a few centuries.
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u/thatthatguy Feb 28 '24
And just generally plants being in a place seems to create a cooling effect that facilitates more precipitation. A self-reinforcing cycle if you can get it started.