Plumes of air pollution generated from a rapidly expanding city within the Amazon rainforest are wafting hundreds of miles and degrading air quality in the pristine rainforest, according to a team of scientists.
Plumes of air pollution generated from a rapidly expanding city within the Amazon rainforest are wafting hundreds of miles and degrading air quality in the pristine rainforest, according to a team of scientists.
Urban emissions from Manaus, a city of more than two million in Brazil, lead to elevated levels of ozone, a greenhouse gas and a harmful pollutant to human health, and the formation of aerosols in the atmosphere above the rainforest, the team reported in Atmospheric Environment.
"Through this study of the Amazon rainforest, we can get a better idea of how human activities are influencing the conditions in what has been considered a pristine environment," said Dandan Wei, who led the research as a doctoral student in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. Wei is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan.
Scientists observed ozone levels 30 to 50 percent higher than baseline conditions at a location 60 miles downwind of the city. The elevated levels were not present at a site upwind.
Read more at Penn State
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