The water cycle is one of the first science subjects that children learn about at school. An image shows the absorption of water by plants, then transpiration, condensation, precipitation in the form of rain or snow, runoff, and evaporation. The same school lesson covers the basic concepts of a very worrying question: is Brazil getting drier?
The acceleration of the hydrological cycle, a result of global warming, makes climate phenomena such as heavy rainfall and droughts more intense. In addition to its semiarid region expanding, Brazil for the first time has an area classified as arid, as described in this issue’s cover story. Our exact sciences editor, Marcos Pivetta, together with science journalist Renata Fontanetto, identified the most recent studies showing that most of Brazil’s territory is becoming less humid, including areas of the Amazon, the wettest biome in the country.
A silent film about the Amazon shot between 1918 and 1920 and once considered lost has been found, more than 100 years later, in the Czech Republic’s national film archive. The life of Silvino Santos, the Portuguese-Brazilian filmmaker behind the movie, and the history of his cinematographic work Amazonas, maior rio do mundo (Amazon, the longest river in the world) gave rise to a script, according to the report.
Brazilian studies on topics such as the Amazon and climate change are cited in documents proposing and analyzing public policies in other countries, such as the USA, UK, and Germany — even more than in Brazil. A survey by FAPESP is seeking to highlight the impact of these studies outside academia: in addition to those mentioned above, articles written by authors from scientific institutions in the state of São Paulo have also had a major influence on topics such as tropical diseases and ultra-processed foods.
It was Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Augusto Monteiro, known for his research in the field of nutrition, who in 2009 presented the idea that the level to which foods have been processed could contribute to weight gain. His group proposed the Nova classification, which comprises four categories: unprocessed or minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. The latter are not exactly food—they are formulations of artificially created chemical compounds designed to be cheap and have an intense flavor.
In an interview, Monteiro talks about the impacts that ultra-processed foods have on health. Work by his research group showed that obesity is more common among individuals whose diet is rich in this type of food, a finding that was corroborated by long-term studies by other groups. The epidemiologist had more scientific articles cited in 2023 than any other Brazilian researcher, according to an international ranking.
In March, the WHO announced the results of a survey indicating that more than one billion people in the world are obese. The conclusions of the study, which involved 1,500 researchers, including Brazilians, were published in the scientific journal The Lancet. They suggest that obesity in the adult population has increased in almost all 190 countries examined, on average doubling among women and tripling among men. According to Monteiro, the world could be moving toward a situation in which obesity, a chronic disease with multiple causes, becomes the new normal.
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