The researchers concluded that the region facing the greatest danger is the Congo Basin, which is expected to witness an acceleration in the process of deforestation in the coming years, which could lead to a decrease in rainfall by more than 10 percent by the end of the century.
The research, the results of which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, was based on satellite images taken over recent decades, confirming predictions made by computer models of climate change that precipitation rates will decrease in the tropics with increasing deforestation.
The study’s lead author Callum Smith, from the University of Leeds, said the findings raise additional concerns that “we may be reaching a point where rainforests can no longer survive”.
Smith called for a greater commitment to forest conservation, while the researchers concluded that restoring large areas of destroyed forests could halt the decline in precipitation to some extent.
While tropical forests are known to be important to the global climate because they absorb and store carbon dioxide, which leads to global warming, the effects of deforestation on local climate conditions have only been observed in certain regions.
Deforestation, driven by the production of commodity crops such as palm oil and soybeans, livestock raising, and timber exploitation, threatens to exacerbate climate change and destroy biodiversity.
The researchers emphasized that crop production may decrease with deforestation, while increasing drought could lead to an increase in the frequency of fires, resulting in an overall decrease in productivity in tropical forest areas.
Based on data collected in the Amazon, Congo and Southeast Asia between 2003 and 2017, Smith and colleagues found that large-scale deforestation disrupts the water cycle and leads to significant reductions in precipitation, with the greatest losses occurring during the rainy seasons.
Trees return water vapor to the air through their leaves, which can lead to localized precipitation.
Scientists have warned that climate change coinciding with the destruction of forests in the Amazon basin, the largest tropical biome in the world, is pushing the tropical forest towards a “tipping point” that will make it an area similar to the savannah plains.
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