2023 Amazon drought
Tom Goreau
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 09 October 2025
Moisture and temperature sources were key drivers of the anomalies for the record-breaking of 2023 Amazon drought
Communications Earth & Environment volume 6, Article number: 801 (2025)
The record-breaking 2022–24 Amazon-drought, which extended into the Orinoco and Cerrado regions, was characterized by severe-dry conditions during the dry-to-wet transition-season of the 2023–24 hydrological years (September-November/2023). This situation was not driven by a moisture-deficit from either remote sources or the region itself, although oceanic moisture sources exhibited negative anomalies. It was caused by the prevailing atmospheric stability, which inhibited convection and therefore precipitation in this region, and by extremely high temperatures having as its main driver the transition from 2022–23 La Niña to 2023–24 El Niño, which amplified the anomalies in the variables. Although atmospheric moisture was anomalously high, it was insufficient to compensate for the high temperatures, which led to reduced relative humidity values and enhanced atmospheric evaporative demand. Moisture that did not precipitate in the region was transported to areas where there was sufficient instability for convection, resulting in high precipitation and floods in the Uruguay/Brazilian-South-Atlantic-Marginal river basins in September-October/2023. The temperature anomaly over the target region had two sources: a local one contributing to warming and an external one contributing to cooling. The results show the importance of adiabatic warming due to subsidence in the region itself and outside the region.
rob de laet
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Tom Goreau
To be sure this is a phenomenological study of the atmospheric impacts of one extreme event, not a predictor of what will happen to biological feedbacks stretched past the breaking point, so it is an underestimate of the impacts of the next extreme record event.
The climate catastrophe devastating my island Jamaica today by the worst hurricane in our history will be far worse than the previous records set by Charlie, Flora, Allen, Gilbert, and Ivan, a trend directly caused by global warming.
Bru Pearce
Hi Sue,
Having just read your below email I thought you might be interested to connect with my friend Johann Hoschtialek and the project he is leading 195 in 365 see attached.
Best wishes
Bru
Pearce
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From: ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com <ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Sue Lennox
Sent: 28 October 2025 22:41
To: rob de laet <robd...@yahoo.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; EcoRestoration Alliance <ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com>; Anastassia Makarieva <ammak...@gmail.com>; Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Peter Bunyard
<peter....@btinternet.com>; Ali Bin Shahid <a...@paanisubkayliay.com>; Antonio Donato Nobre <anob...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ERA] 2023 Amazon drought - YOUTH VOICE
Thanks Rob - this is valuable information. Can I quote you or better still can you give me reference?
Hope you are keeping well in these challenging times.
I am wondering if you have come across any young people (aged 14-35), who could be interested in getting involved in Youth Leading the World (YLTW). YLTW is an OzGREEN initiative that seeks to train and support local facilitators to run the youth environmental leadership program in their own region, connected to other youth globally. To date we have trained over 1300 Facilitators from around the world.
It would be wonderful to have the voice of youth from the Amazon sharing their story as part of a global platform of youth working for change. I am part of the Local Organising Committee for the upcoming 13th World Environmental Education Congress (WEEC), coming up 21-25 September 2026 in Perth. My focus has been on youth engagement and youth voice in this program. We have established an amazing Youth Leaders Committee (YLC) of 26 young people from around the world.
We have a YLTW Facilitator Training coming up in the next month, focused on Oceania and Americas. We are just in the process of making a date to suit the most people. We have an amazing Spanish speaking mentor based in Colombia who is supporting youth from the region.
I have attached some background info about YLTW and links to 13th WEEC are above.
Let me know if this is of interest and we can make a time to talk.
On the flip side the El Nina in Australia = more rain. I think we are coming into the 4th or 5th year of La Niña (unprecedented). But at present it is being out competed by the Antarctic Sudden Stratospheric Warming event and we have unprecedented hot and dry conditions.
With love, Sue
Sue Lennox AM
2020 NSW Senior Australian of the Year
Co-Founder OzGREEN
Founder Youth Leading the World (YLTW)
Phone + 61 408 027 995
Email: sle...@ozgreen.org.au
Website: www.ozgreen.org
Jagun yaam Gumbaynggirrgundi.
I live and work in Gumbaynggirr Country.
I give my love and respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
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Tom Goreau
The amount of water the air can hold (the water vapor pressure) increases exponentially with temperature so the warmer it is the more latent heat of evapotranspiration is in the air, which drives buoyancy and winds. A 1C rise in average temperature can result in up to 7% more heat content. The hotter it is the power of the hurricane rises exponentially. My island, Jamaica, was devastated yesterday by the worst hurricane in our history, it will take a long time before the damage can even be assessed.
From:
Michael Pilarski <friendso...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 00:11
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: Rob <robd...@yahoo.com>, EcoRestoration Alliance <ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Planet Action Coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Anastassia Makarieva <ammak...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ERA] 2023 Amazon drought
Why does warming lead to bigger hurricanes?
Higher surface ocean temperatures?
My understanding is that precipitation leads to a release of heat into the atmosphere and a lot of it escapes to space. Ie. precipitation is one of the main ways the planet can cool itself
The planet is overheating and big hurricanes with lots or rain are one of the ways the planet can cool itself. Is this giving the Earth too much credit for knowing what it is doing? or what are the scientific explanations?
Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski
Earth Repair - Permaculture - Agroforestry - Wildcrafting - Medicinal Herbs
PO Box 1133
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I acknowledge that I live on the stolen lands of the Chemacum, S'Klallam and Klallam PeopleWhy does ws.
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Positive energy to you and your fam, friends, and colleagues in Jamaica Tom, and everyone else impacted by Melissa too.
The Clausius–Clapeyron moisture-temperature relationship of a 7% percent increase in moisture per degree C of warming is widely misused in the media to represent the increasing precipitation caused by climate warming. The dynamics of the heat of condensation you mentioned are far more important than Clausius–Clapeyron. I logged a couple of works into my database on the topic after Hurricane Harvey. See below,
MeltOn
Harvey and
Atlas 14
Rainfall Frequency and Intensity increase intensity
Rainbombs
Most of us have heard that atmospheric moisture increases in quantity at a rate of seven percent per degree C of warming. The media almost always presents this number as a metric to identify how much more extreme a rainfall event can be because of climate warming. This is a valid piece of physics but taken in context and poorly interpreted by the media. It only applies to the laboratory evaluated water-holding capacity of air. Many more physical relationships affect the amount it actually rains with one degree C of warming. When air rises in a storm, its moisture condenses out and falls as rain. Condensation creates heat and this extra heat then causes extra lift that causes more air in the storm to rise faster, allowing more condensation faster, that creates more lift faster in a feedback loop. As a comparison, academic work on Hurricane Harvey's rainfall showed that the dynamic factors involved with that storm increased rainfall volume by 38 percent, not the 7 percent increase allowed by the climate change increased capacity of moisture in the atmosphere alone. (Risser and Wehner 2017)
Harvey’s
rainfall was 38 percent more intense than in our normal
climate, not 7 percent
per degree C… The study looked
at a 200-mile
ellipse along the Texas and Louisiana coasts from southwest of
Houston to Lake
Charles LA and extending 100 miles inland for a seven-day
duration with
widespread 32-inch radar estimated totals. Harvey was just a
five-day event,
but this eval used the more common 7-day to look at history. Not
included in
this ellipse were reported widespread 40 inches totals and three
60-inch
bullseyes. The large complete storm analysis had an ellipse 300
miles along the
coast and 150 miles inland with totals down to 5 to 6 inches and
an increase in
rainfall of up to 22 percent.
Risser and Wehner, Attributable Human-Induced Changes in the
Likelihood and
Magnitude of the Observed Extreme Precipitation during Hurricane
Harvey Geophysical
Research Letters, December 23, 2017.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL075888
World Weather Attribution Network
Harvey’s
precipitation increase was up to nearly 20 percent more, based
on a three-day, 24-inch
rainfall… Harvey’s increase in precipitation up to
almost 20 percent based on weather station data the authors
consider to underestimate with about 24
inches total.
Climate change fingerprints confirmed in Hurricane Harvey’s
rainfall, World
Weather Attribution, August 2017.
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/hurricane-harvey-august-2017/
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
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Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1
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Tom Goreau
To be sure, the Clausius Clapeyron relationship is an equilibrium one, and the eye of a hurricane is very dynamic!
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rob de laet
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 5:51 AM
To: Sue Lennox <sle...@ozgreen.org.au>; rob de laet <robd...@yahoo.com>; Johann Hoschtialek <joh...@195in365.com>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; EcoRestoration Alliance <ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com>; Anastassia Makarieva <ammak...@gmail.com>; Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Peter Bunyard <peter....@btinternet.com>; Ali Bin Shahid <a...@paanisubkayliay.com>; Antonio Donato Nobre <anob...@gmail.com>
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Jan Umsonst
Hi all,
I want just to contribute these two studies to the conversation (also important the discussion on the drivers is still somewhat conflicting - also reduces moisture inflow is discussed by other studies - La Nina effect and tropical Atlantic running hot - but would have to dig these studies out again, so its a ? attached):
One is this preprint that the Amazon drought couples with the trade winds over the North Atlantic which it weakens thereby increasing tropical SSTs (also a contributor to the droughts by changing wind patterns) and reduces thereby the moisture transport - but it does not discuss 2023/24.
"Nonlinear interactions between the Amazon River basin and the Tropical North Atlantic at interannual timescales"; https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02102
The following shows nicely of what a peak we had in 2023/24 in terms of drought - with the terrestrial carbon sink nearly collapsing in 2023/24 due to hot and dry conditions and then wet and hot conditions (microbial respiration - if the study is right) this feedback is developing fast a non-linear character...
Also we had Australia 2019/20, Canada 2023, or the boreal forests 2019/20 (if I'm not mistaken) which shows how fast important bioms can suddenly produce huge carbon signals.
“Evaluating the 2023–2024 record dry-hot conditions in the Amazon in the context of historical compound extremes”; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ade550
Here the study that moist and hot conditions caused the spike in 2024 and the one from 2023 with hot and dry conditions - this feedback comes fast and seems to have global thresholds...
"Low latency carbon budget analysis reveals a large decline of the land carbon sink in 2023"; https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/11/12/nwae367/7831648
"Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024"; https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6956425/v1
This detail on the switch of the Australian tropical forest into a larger carbon source then they had been a sink - if this would be a general principle we could be soon in real trouble when the next temperature jump happens:
Here we use long-term forest inventory data (1971–2019) from Australian moist tropical forests and a causal inference framework8,9,10 to assess the carbon balance of woody aboveground standing biomass over time, the demographic processes accounting for it, and its climatic drivers, including cyclones. We find that a transition from sink (0.62 ± 0.04 Mg C ha−1 yr−1: 1971–2000) to source (−0.93 ± 0.11 Mg C ha−1 yr−1: 2010–2019) has occurred for the aboveground woody biomass of these forests, with sink capacity declining at a rate of 0.041 ± 0.032 Mg C ha−1 yr−1. The transition was driven by increasingly extreme temperature and other climate anomalies, which have increased tree mortality and associated biomass losses4,
"Aboveground biomass in Australian tropical forests now a net carbon source"; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09497-8
All the best
Jan
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Jan Umsonst
Hi all,
just here one study on the drivers in 2023 - just to point out the somewhat conflicting study results:
The drivers and consequences of drought
Our results show how elevated SST anomalies in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans and associated changes in atmospheric circulation and surface hydroclimatic conditions, contributed to intensifying widespread soil water deficits across the Amazon during the second half of 2023
Temperature and precipitation anomalies in the Amazon basin have surpassed the previous record in 2015/16 (Espinoza et al., 2024; Jiménez-Muñoz et al., 2016b) and their extreme magnitude has been attributed to climate change (WWA, 2024). Compared with 2015/16 and previous droughts, the potential cumulative water deficits and extremely high vapor pressure anomalies registered in late 2023 progressed deeper into the humid Amazon forest, extending the dry season by several months and thus contributing to increased vegetation stress.
Source: "Reduced vegetation uptake during the extreme 2023 drought turns the Amazon into a weak carbon source"; https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3632090/component/file_3632091/content
So its sill widely discussed what had been the reasons - but I do not want to say the below study is wrong only that its still ongoing on what the heck happened there in 2023/24.
All the best
Jan
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