Now, a new documentary, Rivers Above the Canopy, by French filmmaker Pascal Cuissot, features Antonio Nobre and his investigations into the Amazon’s importance to the global climate. The film has been shown in France, Germany and Brazil.
Also featured is physicist Anastassia Makarieva of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia, who, with the late Victor Gorshkov, first came up with the concept of the biotic pump, an active function of forests. Increasingly, Nobre’s work on the Amazon is informed by this theory. For example, in a 2014 report, “The Future Climate of Amazonia,” a tour-de-force of explanatory science, Nobre describes how this “green ocean” not only creates its own rain but moves moisture across the continent via aerial rivers. Lately, he has collaborated on scientific papers with Makarieva and other biotic pump researchers.