Science News – Forests influence their local climates through various physical and chemical processes, cooling the trees and their surroundings. And a new study finds that tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 degree Celsius.
The findings suggest that global and regional climate action efforts should refrain from focusing solely on carbon emissions. “It’s time to think about what else forests are doing for us besides just absorbing carbon dioxide,” says Deborah Lawrence, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
To assess the impact of restoring and protecting forests, it’s useful to consider how forest degradation, in addition to deforestation, impacts regional and global climate temperatures.
