Climate
The mean inter-annual precipitations on the great basins vary from 750 to 3,000 millimetres (30 to 120 in), the entire upper Madeira basin receiving 1,705 millimetres (67.1 in). The greatest extremes of rainfall are between 490 to 7,000 millimetres (19 to 280 in). At its head, the Madeira on its own is still one of the largest rivers of the world, with a mean inter-annual discharge of 18,000 cubic metres per second (640,000 cu ft/s), i.e. 536 cubic kilometres (129 cu mi)/yr, approximately half the discharge of the Congo River. The mean inter-annual contribution of the Bolivian Andes is 4,170 cubic metres per second (147,000 cu ft/s), i.e. 132 cubic kilometres (32 cu mi)yr, representing 25% of the discharge of the entire upper Madeira basin. On the further course towards the Amazon, the mean discharge of the Madeira increases up to 31,200 cubic metres per second (1,100,000 cu ft/s).
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)