Enhanced local cooling effects of forests across the globe

Résumé fourni par la source

Summary Forests cool the land surface in warm regions and warm the land surface in cool regions. Because these local temperature buffering effects depend on background climate 1,2 , increasingly large areas might experience forest cooling effects as the climate warms 3–5 . Here, using statistical modeling, we quantified changes in the sensitivity of land surface temperatures 6 to forest cover change 7 from 1988 – 2016, across 15 million km 2 of land area. Forests had a local cooling effect on day and night surface temperatures in 86.3% (72 million km 2 ) and 61.6% (5,108 million km 2 ) of the forest area, respectively. This area has increased by 0.3% (0.2 million km 2 ) at day and 4.7% (2 million km 2 ) at night over recent decades. Our study indicates that climate change is enhancing the cooling effect of forests in the short term, underscoring the importance of protecting natural, diverse forest ecosystems in the face of rising global temperatures that threaten ecosystems 8,9 , human health 10,11 , and food production 12 .

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.