![]() Recent findings show that climate change strongly impacts Amazonia’s carbon balance, showing that non-deforested areas could soon become a carbon source for the atmosphere. Tropical forests have evolved under a relatively stable climate, and the increase in droughts and extensive floods could be enhancing tree mortality. At the same time, since late 1990, nine extreme floods have occurred, the last one in 2021. Severe droughts have hit Amazonia three times since 2005. In Southeast Amazônia, the dry season has expanded from four to five months during the past 50 years. Tropical forest temperatures are in sharp increase, in some regions, by more than 1.5☌. Climate extremes are increasing significantly in tropical regions. ![]() While tropical forests contribute to climate regulation, global climate change is impacting forest ecosystems. However, when forest cover and structure change due to land use and climate change forcings, shifts in biophysical processes occur, affecting ecosystem services related to water, carbon, and energy balances. The vertical distribution of latent heating released by convection over tropical forests impacts the Earth´s climate. Deep convection is frequent due to the higher convective available potential energy (CAPE). īy the process of evapotranspiration, tropical forests provide water vapor to support cloud formation regionally as well as in interconnection with other parts of the globe. Most of the aerosols over tropical forests are organic and, due to strong deep convection, are transported to the upper troposphere. When acting as CCN, OA increases cloud albedo, leading to additional biophysical cooling and increased diffuse radiation, which favors carbon uptake by the vegetation. Organic aerosols (OA) scatter solar radiation, cooling the surface and compensating for part of the heating produced by the greenhouse gases. Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) emitted by forests produces secondary organic aerosols (SOA) that are one of the main sources of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), which are critical to nucleate cloud droplets. Tropical forests have a critical role in supporting biodiversity, storing carbon, regulating the water cycle, influencing the radiation balance via albedo, and having an important role in human well-being. In addition, forests are responsible for much of the carbon removal by terrestrial ecosystems, removing about 29% of annual CO 2 emissions or 15.6 Gigatons of CO 2 each year. Tropical forests are large pools of global carbon, with about 360 Pg of carbon in forest vegetation, that with soil carbon adds up to 800 PgC, almost as much as is stored in the atmosphere. Tropical forests are critically important for the global climate because of their impact on the radiation, hydrology, and biogeochemical cycles.
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