Chopping down areas of tropical rainforest is causing rising temperatures linked to thousands of deaths
Tropical forests are hot, steamy places. But when large numbers of trees are cut down, they get even hotter. Our recent research shows that clearing large areas of the rainforest exposes hundreds of millions of people to higher temperatures, increasing heat stress (when the body’s way of controlling temperature fails) and, in some cases, contributing to death. Research suggests that this could be contributing to 28,000 heat-related deaths each year across the tropics every year. Apart from the shade that the rainforest canopy provides, trees also cool their surroundings by pumping water from the soil into the atmosphere – a process known as evapotranspiration. Like sweat evaporating from our skin, this uses energy and cools the air. A single large tropical tree provides as much cooling as several air conditioners running continuously. Across the billions of trees in the Amazon or Congo, this “sweating” cools entire regions. People living in or near tropical forests recognise these cooling benefits. When villagers in rainforest regions in Kalimantan, Indonesia, were interviewed about the benefits tropical forests provide, the …
