CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 373Climate variability and modelsHydrology and Drought AnalysisFire effects on ecosystems

Causes and impacts of the 2005 Amazon drought

Open access
Zeng, Ning, Yoon, Jin-Ho, Marengo, Jose A, Subramaniam, Ajit, Nobre, Carlos A, Mariotti, Annarita, Neelin, J David·2008·Environmental Research Letters
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/3/1/014002
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

A rare drought in the Amazon culminated in 2005, leading to near record-low streamflows, small Amazon river plume, and greatly enhanced fire frequency. This episode was caused by the combination of 2002–03 El Niño and a dry spell in 2005 attributable to a warm subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. Analysis for 1979–2005 reveals that the Atlantic influence is comparable to the better-known Pacific linkage. While the Pacific influence is typically locked to the wet season, the 2005 Atlantic impact concentrated in the Amazon dry season when its hydroecosystem is most vulnerable. Such mechanisms may have wide-ranging implications for the future of the Amazon rainforest.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1088/1748-9326/3/1/014002

Cites

38 of 38 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The two record droughts of 2005 and 2010 were regarded as once-in-a-century climate extremes at the times of their occurrences and were linked to anomalous SSTs in the tropical Atlantic.

    “The two record droughts of 2005 and 2010 were regarded as “once in a century” climate extremes at the times of their occurrences and were linked to anomalous SSTs in the tropical Atlantic (Figure 1; Marengo et al., 2008;Zeng et al., 2008;Lewis et al., 2011).”

    From The tropical atlantic observing system (2019) · cites this paper as Zeng et al., 2008

    Section 4 links the 2005 Amazon drought to tropical Atlantic SST anomalies. The paper does not address the 2010 drought or describe either event as “once in a century”; it calls the 2005 drought rare and reports near-record-low streamflows. (LLM, conf=0.90)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • During 2005-2008 the Amazon was a net carbon source due to drought-stressed and dying trees, combined with increased occurrence of fires.

    “However, during 2005-2008 the Amazon was a net carbon source due to drought-stressed and dying trees, combined with increased occurrence of fires (Zeng et al., 2008;Yang et al., 2018).”

    From The tropical atlantic observing system (2019) · cites this paper as Zeng et al., 2008

    Section 3 (page not provided) reports that fires across the Amazon basin were more than twice as frequent in 2005 as the average of the preceding seven years, and says drought made forests more prone to burning. It does not establish that the Amazon was a net carbon source, attribute carbon emissions to stressed or dying trees, or document those conditions throughout 2005–2008. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • The metric captured a rare drought in the Amazon in 2005 that prompted long fire weather seasons, leading to a dramatic increase in basin-wide fire activity.

    “Our metric captured a rare drought in the Amazon in 2005 that prompted long fire weather seasons, leading to a dramatic increase in basin-wide fire activity58 (Fig. 4, 2005).”

    From Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013 (2015) · cites this paper as [58]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Zeng, N., Yoon, J.-H., Marengo, J. A., Subramaniam, A., Nobre, C. A., Mariotti, A., & Neelin, J. D.
Affiliations
  • Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (US)
  • Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (US)
  • Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (BR)
  • National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (IT)
  • University of California, Los Angeles (US)
ORCID
Venue
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Published
2008-01
Volume
3
Issue
1
Pages
014002
ISSN
1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1088/1748-9326/3/1/014002
OpenAlex
W2140138151
Cited by
373
References
38
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 24 · 2013: 21 · 2012: 15
FWCI
15.77
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Environmental Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Biblioteca Digital da Memória Científica do INPE (National Institute for Space Research) (submittedVersion)
  • Columbia Academic Commons (Columbia University)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • Agência Nacional de Águas
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Hydrology and Drought Analysis
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
Keywords
Amazon rainforest, North Atlantic warming, river discharge, Amazon River plume, fire frequency, dry season, Amazon hydrology

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review