Jhan Carlo Espinoza, who holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris, is research director in Peru for the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD). He has spent several decades studying how the flow of Amazon-region rivers change over time. Not only are droughts and heavy rains more extreme, he says, but extreme events are occurring more frequently as global temperatures rise. Espinoza, a member of the UN-sponsored Science Panel for the Amazon, is co-author of a new paper on the global impact of the freshwater flow from the Amazon, which represents 20% of all fresh water discharged into the oceans. The paper, published this month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, can be accessed at http://bit.ly/3HGq7ep. He says scientists still don’t know enough about the global processes that drive—and are driven by—that discharge. Espinoza spoke by video call with EcoAméricas correspondent Barbara Fraser.
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