Deforestation in the Amazon Increases Local Heat by Up to 4°C

The global climate crisis is one of the reasons why the Amazon is getting hotter; however, a significant portion of the warming in the region is of local and regional origin, linked to the deforestation of the biome. A study conducted by Brazilian and British researchers is the first to quantify the different contributions to this effect. According to the analysis published in the scientific journal PNAS, the increase in temperature in heavily deforested areas of the Amazon basin may have been up to 14 times higher than what would have occurred if the forest had not been cleared. This corresponds to temperatures 4C higher. The study is authored by Edward Butt from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom and Francisco Silva Bezerra from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) in Brazil, among other researchers. They used satellite data to estimate land surface temperatures from 2001 to 2020, covering a significant portion of the periods of major deforestation in the biome.