School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Nature. 2023 Mar;615(7951):270-275. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05690-1. Epub 2023 Mar 1.
Tropical forests play a critical role in the hydrological cycle and can influence local and regional precipitation. Previous work has assessed the impacts of tropical deforestation on precipitation, but these efforts have been largely limited to case studies. A wider analysis of interactions between deforestation and precipitation-and especially how any such interactions might vary across spatial scales-is lacking. Here we show reduced precipitation over deforested regions across the tropics. Our results arise from a pan-tropical assessment of the impacts of 2003-2017 forest loss on precipitation using satellite, station-based and reanalysis datasets. The effect of deforestation on precipitation increased at larger scales, with satellite datasets showing that forest loss caused robust reductions in precipitation at scales greater than 50 km. The greatest declines in precipitation occurred at 200 km, the largest scale we explored, for which 1 percentage point of forest loss reduced precipitation by 0.25 ± 0.1 mm per month. Reanalysis and station-based products disagree on the direction of precipitation responses to forest loss, which we attribute to sparse in situ tropical measurements. We estimate that future deforestation in the Congo will reduce local precipitation by 8-10% in 2100. Our findings provide a compelling argument for tropical forest conservation to support regional climate resilience.
热带雨林在水文循环中起着至关重要的作用，并能影响当地和区域降水。先前的研究评估了热带森林砍伐对降水的影响，但这些努力在很大程度上仅限于案例研究。缺乏对森林砍伐与降水之间相互作用的更广泛分析，特别是缺乏对这些相互作用如何在空间尺度上变化的分析。在这里，我们发现整个热带地区的森林砍伐地区降水减少。我们的结果来自于对 2003 年至 2017 年森林砍伐对降水影响的泛热带评估，使用了卫星、基于站点和再分析数据集。森林砍伐对降水的影响在较大尺度上增大，卫星数据集表明，森林砍伐导致降水在大于 50km 的尺度上显著减少。在我们所探索的最大尺度 200km 处，降水降幅最大，森林损失 1%会导致每月降水减少 0.25±0.1mm。再分析和基于站点的产品对森林砍伐导致的降水响应方向存在分歧，我们将其归因于热带地区稀疏的实地测量。我们估计，刚果未来的森林砍伐将导致 2100 年当地降水减少 8-10%。我们的研究结果为保护热带森林以支持区域气候恢复力提供了有力论据。
