How Deforestation Affects Global Weather Patterns

Deforestation is one of the worst ways humans can influence nature in and also a major accelerator to the global climate crisis we are experiencing right now. This is for several reasons.

Firstly, deforestation reduces the amount of carbon sinks in the biosphere. By removing trees – usually via combustion – humans release the carbon stored in the biomass of trees into the atmosphere immediately. On top of that, the unit area of land experiences a reduction in the amount of carbon it can sequester in the long term without the trees that were planted on top of it. Even worse, removal of trees can cause soil degradation by reducing the amount of water and nutrient cycled in between the soil, biomass, and the atmosphere. Thus, this can cause the degraded soil to emit the carbon that it used to store as well.

Secondly, deforestation disrupt local climate patterns by reducing evapotranspiration. Once the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere reduces, there will be less cloud formation and thus less precipitation. This further causes more trees to get dehydrated and more reduction in tree density. Eventually, this may lead to a radical change in climate and even desertification in the same area where it used to be a forest.

Also, deforestation disrupts global climate patterns by influencing the amount of water vapor carried in global atmospheric circulations, impacting precipitation elsewhere in the world along with the pattern and formation of tropical storms in places seemingly far away.