Tropical Rainforest Climate Change

Flenley Department of Biological Sciences Geography Programme Florida Institute of Technology.

Tropical rainforest climate change. Worldwide the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for around 15 percent of all annual greenhouse. Forests and the climate are inextricably linked. But theres a tragic irony to clearing rainforests for agriculture.

Their underlying soils are extremely poor. All forests make the world wetter by sending a huge amount of water vapour into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration. The Paris Climate Agreement strongly recognized the crucial role of forests for climate change mitigation as global mitigation goals will require negative carbon emissions.

Rainforests help to regulate Earths climate. Science economics and politics are now aligned to support a major international effort to protect tropical forests. In doing so they produce that thick and beautifully dramatic cloud cover that reflects sunlight back to space.

So any changes in the size of the global rainforest can have a big impact on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Huntingford C Zelazowski P Galbraith D. Forests play a role in mitigating climate change by absorbing the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from human activities chiefly the burning of fossil fuels for energy and other.

However forests are also themselves affected by this warming. Despite their importance tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. Forests in tropical and temperate regions have a cooling effect whereas boreal forests found in high northern latitudes make their climate warmer.

All the nutrient-richness is locked up in the forests themselves so once they are burned and the nutrients from their ashes are used up farmers are left with utterly useless soil. By protecting rainforest habitat for endangered species Rainforest Trust prevents carbon emissions and safeguards the planets resilience to climate change. While all forests have climate-cooling superpowers tropical forests trap larger amounts of carbon dioxide and evaporate more water.