Xu, R, Li, Y, Teuling, AJ et al. (8 more authors) (2022) Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations. Nature Communications, 13 (1). 670. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Forests play a pivotal role in regulating climate and sustaining the hydrological cycle. The biophysical impacts of forests on clouds, however, remain unclear. Here, we use satellite data to show that forests in different regions have opposite effects on summer cloud cover. We find enhanced clouds over most temperate and boreal forests but inhibited clouds over Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast US. The spatial variation in the sign of cloud effects is driven by sensible heating, where cloud enhancement is more likely to occur over forests with larger sensible heat, and cloud inhibition over forests with smaller sensible heat. Ongoing forest cover loss has led to cloud increase over forest loss hotspots in the Amazon (+0.78%), Indonesia (+1.19%), and Southeast US (+ 0.09%), but cloud reduction in East Siberia (-0.20%) from 2002-2018. Our data-driven assessment improves mechanistic understanding of forest-cloud interactions, which remain uncertain in Earth system models.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022, The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
Dates: |
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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) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Oct 2022 14:34 |
Last Modified: | 11 Oct 2022 14:34 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-022-28161-7 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:191729 |