A lack of "flying rivers," vapor clouds from the Amazon that carry rain, is drying up rivers and reservoirs in central and southeast Brazil.
The Amazon rainforest acts as a huge "water pump" to spread humidity from the trees through the air, but that vital role has been diminished due to deforestation and climate change, the Guardian reported.
Scientists have long been warning that damage to the rainforests would have devastating and widespread effects.
"Destroying the Amazon to advance the agricultural frontier is like shooting yourself in the foot," Brazil's Antonio Nobre, a leading climate scientist, told the journal Valor Economica in 2009. "The Amazon is a gigantic hydrological pump that brings the humidity of the Atlantic Ocean into the continent and guarantees the irrigation of the region."
Amazon deforestation rose by 10 percent between August 2013 and July 2014 after falling for two years as trees are cleared to make way for logging and farming.
Additionally, three states in the Greater Amazon region--Tocantins, Pará and Mato Grosso--have had massive deforestation and are now reporting rising temperatures.
Brazil has seen alarming deforestation rates nationwide with 22 percent of the Amazon rainforest depleted; 47 percent of the Cerrado in central Brazil; and 91.5 percent of the Atlantic forest, an area that formerly stretched the entire length of the coastal area.
"A big tree with a crown 20 meters [roughly 65 feet] across evaporates up to 300 liters [about 80 gallons] a day, whereas one square meter of ocean evaporates exactly one square meter," Nobre said. "One square meter of forest can contain eight or 10 meters of leaves, so it evaporates eight or 10 times more than the ocean. This flying river, which rises into the atmosphere in the form of vapor, is bigger than the biggest river on the Earth."
Brazilian and German scientists are looking to gather more data on climate change using the new Amazon Tall Tower Observatory, which will be more than a thousand feet tall when completed, according to a BBC News report.
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