There is pressing need to anticipate the impacts of climate change on species and their functional contributions to ecosystem processes. Our objective is to evaluate the potential bee response to climate change considering (1) response traits—body size, nest site, and sociality; (2) contributions to ecosystem services (effect trait)—crop pollination; and (3) bees’ size of current occurrence area. We analyzed 216 species occurring at the Carajás National Forest (Eastern Amazon, Pará, Brazil), using two different algorithms and geographically explicit data. We modeled the current occurrence area of bees and projected their range shift under future climate change scenarios through species distribution modeling. We then tested the relationship of potential loss of occurrence area with bee traits and current occurrence area. Our projections show that 95% of bee species will face a decline in their total occurrence area, and only 15 to 4% will find climatically suitable habitats in Carajás. The results indicate an overall reduction in suitable areas for all traits analyzed. Bees presenting medium and restricted geographic distributions, as well as vital crop pollinators, will experience significantly higher losses in occurrence area. The potentially remaining species will be the wide-range habitat generalists, and the decline in crop-pollinator species will probably pose negative impact on pollination service. The north of Pará presented the greatest future climatic suitability and can be considered for conservation purposes. These findings emphasize the detrimental effects on biodiversity and agricultural production by climate change and provide data to support conservation planning.

Monitoring rainfall in the Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA), which comprises most of the largest tropical rainforest and largest river basin on the planet, is extremely important but challenging. The size of the area and land cover alone impose difficulties on the operation of a rain gauge network. Given this, we aimed to evaluate the performance of nine databases that estimate rainfall in the BLA, four from gridded analyses based on pluviometry (Xavier, CPC, GPCC and CRU), four based on remote sensing (CHIRPS, IMERG, CMORPH and PERSIANN-CDR), and one from reanalysis (ERA5Land). We found that all the bases are efficient in characterizing the average annual cycle of accumulated precipitation in the BLA, but with a predominantly negative bias. Parameters such as Pearson’s correlation (r), root-mean-square error (RMSE) and Taylor diagrams (SDE), applied in a spatial analysis for the entire BLA as well as for six pluviometrically homogeneous regions, showed that, based on a skill ranking, the data from Xavier’s grid analysis, CHIRPS, GPCC and ERA5Land best represent precipitation in the BLA at monthly, seasonal and annual levels. The PERSIANN-CDR data showed intermediate performance, while the IMERG, CMORPH, CRU and CPC data showed the lowest correlations and highest errors, characteristics also captured in the Taylor diagrams. It is hoped that this demonstration of hierarchy based on skill will subsidize climate studies in this region of great relevance in terms of biodiversity, water resources and as an important climate regulator.

At subannual timescales, terrestrial water storage (TWS) plays a critical role in the partitioning of precipitation into runoff and evapotranspiration, and Amazonia stands out due to the great amplitude of the annual cycles. In this study, we analyse the monthly variation of the water balance and extreme hydrological events using GRACE data for a watershed situated in the “arc‐of‐deforestation” in the Eastern Brazilian Legal Amazon. The existence of a correlation and lag time response between the monthly sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and North Atlantic and the variables of the water balance were also investigated. The results showed a weak seasonal cycle of evapotranspiration, with higher water intercepted by the vegetation canopy in the rainy season and higher potential evapotranspiration supplied by TWS in the dry season. The lowest value of water storage was reached in December 2015 during the strongest El Niño event observed in the analysed period (2002–2016). This value impacted the streamflow for at least the entire rainy season. The correlation analysis showed that positive anomalies of the Niño 3.4 index from October to March caused a significant decrease in precipitation in the following March to May and in November, a significant increase in the reference evapotranspiration in April and May, and longer lasting effects on the streamflow and TWS. Although the underlying mechanisms contributing to the time delays remain incompletely understood, the results indicate that consideration of the ENSO influence on the water balance and of the TWS influence on streamflow would improve flood and drought forecasts with benefits for water management.

The Itacaiúnas River basin, an important watershed for the mining sector in Brazil, has had 51% of its native forest area deforested in the last forty years. It is in the arc of deforestation of the Amazon. It has protected areas essential to local biodiversity maintenance, in addition to owning ore reserves. Here, we present the first study to assess the mean annual, seasonal, and spatialized hydrological processes, providing results on a detailed scale in the basin, including mining sites. We used five future projections of mean monthly temperature and daily precipitation as input to the MGB hydrological model to simulate how hydrological processes, such as evapotranspiration, water availability, and high flows, may change in the next 30 years. The future decrease in precipitation (−8%) and increase in temperature (10%) may strengthen the monsoon seasonal cycle and lengthen the dry month for evapotranspiration. Furthermore, some parts of the basin expect an increase in the high flows (8.1%) and a decrease in water availability (−93.6%). These results provide subsidies to develop adaptation strategies to ensure the viability of mining operations and safeguard the surrounding environment and communities.

The principal objectives here are to quantify the strengths of global monsoon circulations in terms of cross‐equatorial moisture transport and to verify its behaviour during two extreme years of precipitation over the Amazon Basin. The National Centers for Environmental Prediction / National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) Reanalysis data sets for the period 1950–2012 are used in this study and the results are compared with calculations from ERA‐Interim data. During the South Asian summer monsoon (JJA), the transport is 82.1 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ between 30° and 90°E from the Southern Hemisphere (SH) to the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and reverses to 41.4 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ from NH to SH in northern winter (DJF). Over South America between 30° and 90°W, the values are 31.4 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ in DJF from NH to SH and 21.5 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ in JJA from SH to NH. Although there is no wind reversal from summer to winter seasons over the South American monsoon region, the moisture transport across the equator reverses. The transports during a weak and a strong monsoon in the Amazon Basin are distinctly different suggesting that the cross‐equatorial moisture transport can be used as a Monsoon Intensity Index (MII). For the South American monsoon, the DJF index is 28.5 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ in the dry year 2004–2005 and 45.1 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹ in the wet year 2011–2012 as against the climatological value of 31.4 × 10⁷ kg s⁻¹. There is an indication of an inverse relation between the MIIs over the Amazon Basin and the Australian sectors. The annual mean moisture transport across the equator is from SH to NH and is equivalent to three Amazon River discharges.

Knowledge about regions where lightning occurs is important both for understanding storm development and direction. This can assist in very short-term weather forecasts and in developing lightning warning systems, aiming to minimize exposure of people and equipment in the open sky. A survey on the occurrence of lightning in different types of land use and coverage and different elevation strata in the region of the Itacaiúnas River watershed (IRW), located in the Carajás Mineral Province, in the Eastern Amazon, from 2012 to 2021 was conducted. The results showed significant differences in the occurrence of lightning in mining areas and deforested areas. When comparing the large proportion of deforested areas with the mining area, the results suggested that in IRW mining areas, the lightning incidence is expressively higher. The assessment of electrical activity at different elevations in the region suggested that the slope of the terrain and its thermodynamic effects on the formation of storms have more influence than altitude on lightning activity. The results showed the importance of adopting initiatives aimed at protecting both the local population and mining workers, as well as equipment exposed to the open sky in this region.