of forests in the water cycle and climate. Given the deforestation threat, there is no time to lose. So we are undertaking all possible efforts to stimulate a constructive discussion of condensation dynamics by members of the meteorological community. Still, the progress appears to be slow. In 2010 we submitted an overview of the theory to the journal ACPD, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions that allows for an open discussion of submitted papers: Makarieva A.M., Gorshkov V.G., Sheil D., Nobre A.D., Li B.-L. (2010) Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 10, 24015- 24052. For six months the editors could not find reviewers willing to publicly evaluate our work. After we informed the wider scientific community of our situation, a leading NOAA hydrologist circulated our work among many of his colleagues-meteorologists. Only one of them considered the possibility of becoming a referee, and he strongly objected to our work. As we have always welcomed any criticism to be put forward openly regarding our work, we suggested that the editor invite the referee even though we knew in advance that he had a negative view of our work. After the negative review was posted, we replied to all the arguments. Since then the paper was suspended, it has now been in open review for over fifteen months and it's been twenty months since our submission. As any scientist will tell you, such extraordinary impediments and delays would discourage any researcher; they are disrupting the normal scientific process. But we remain hopeful that our efforts are not in vain. Mongabay: Can you give an example of why the current understanding of condensation and precipitation is wrong? Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva: Our work was discussed rather widely on the web, sometimes with direct or indirect participation of leading meteorologists. These discussions revealed that the physics of condensation has not been given sufficient attention by the meteorological community, the result being that even some very basic issues remained unresolved and unclear to many. For example, a question that caused a lot of confusion was: if condensation occurs in the atmosphere and some vapor turns to liquid, will air pressure at the surface be affected near instantaneously or only after the raindrops have fallen to the ground? The latter is a common view caused by a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of hydrostatic equilibrium. Rainstorm over the Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In hydrostatic equilibrium, air pressure at any height is equal to the weight of air in the atmospheric column above that height. Many meteorologists think that hydrostatic air pressure at the surface is equal to the weight of both air and all the liquid and solid bodies including the raindrops that are in the upper atmosphere. Had this been true, condensation in hydrostatic equilibrium could have never changed the surface pressure prior to precipitation fallout, because condensation of gas (vapor) into liquid does not change the total amount of matter. However, ideal gas pressure depends on the