Tropical forests cool the global average temperature by about 1 degree Celsius. Only around two thirds of that cooling, however, is due to carbon capture.
So she and her colleagues analyzed how the complete deforestation of different regions would impact global temperatures, using data gathered from other studies. For instance, the researchers used forest biomass data to determine how much the release of carbon stored by those forests would warm the global temperature.
Forests located from 30° N to 30° S provided alternative benefits that cool the planet by over 0.3 degrees C, about half as much cooling as carbon sequestration provided. And the bulk of that cooling, around 0.2 degrees C, came from forests in the core of the tropics . Canopy topography generally provided the greatest cooling, followed by evapotranspiration and then aerosols.
The findings suggest that global and regional climate action efforts should refrain from focusing solely on carbon emissions, Lawrence says. “There’s this whole service that tropical forests are providing that simply are not visible to us or to policy makers.”
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