Impact on short-lived climate forcers increases projected warming due to deforestation

Abstract

The climate impact of deforestation depends on the relative strength of several biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects. In addition to affecting the exchange of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and moisture with the atmosphere and surface albedo, vegetation emits biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that alter the formation of short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), which include aerosol, ozone and methane. Here we show that a scenario of complete global deforestation results in a net positive radiative forcing (RF; 0.12 W m−²) from SLCFs, with the negative RF from decreases in ozone and methane concentrations partially offsetting the positive aerosol RF. Combining RFs due to CO₂, surface albedo and SLCFs suggests that global deforestation could cause 0.8 K warming after 100 years, with SLCFs contributing 8% of the effect. However, deforestation as projected by the RCP8.5 scenario leads to zero net RF from SLCF, primarily due to nonlinearities in the aerosol indirect effect.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Scott, CE https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0187-969X Monks, SA Spracklen, DV Arnold, SR Forster, PM Rap, A Aijala, M Artaxo, P Carslaw, KS Chipperfield, MP Ehn, M Gilardoni, S Heikkinen, L Kulmala, M Petaja, T Reddington, CLS Rizzo, LV Swietlicki, E Vignati, E Wilson, C
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2018. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Atmospheric chemistry; Climate and Earth system modelling; Environmental impact; Forestry
Dates:	Accepted: 29 November 2017 Published (online): 11 January 2018 Published: 11 January 2018
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number EPSRC EP/I014721/1 NERC NE/G015015/1 NERC NE/J004723/1 NERC NE/K015966/1 EU - European Union 641816
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	12 Jan 2018 10:17
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2018 10:17
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-017-02412-4
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:126170

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Impact on short-lived climate forcers increases projected warming due to deforestation

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