information:extraction, structural:scholar_edition
On atmosphere and climate

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change. It is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Recent calculations suggest that CO emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (excluding peatland emissions) contribute about 12% of total anthropogenic CO emissions, with a range from 6% to 17%. A 2022 study shows annual carbon emissions from tropical deforestation have doubled during the last two decades and continue to increase: by 0.97 ± 0.16 PgC (petagrams of carbon, i.e. billions of tons) per year in 2001–2005 to 1.99 ± 0.13 PgC per year in 2015–2019.

According to a review, north of 50°N, large scale deforestation leads to an overall net global cooling; but deforestation in the tropics leads to substantial warming: not just due to CO impacts, but also due to other biophysical mechanisms (making carbon-centric metrics inadequate). Moreover, it suggests that standing tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 °C. According to a later study, deforestation in northern latitudes can also increase warming, while the conclusion about cooling from deforestation in these areas made by previous studies results from the failure of models to properly capture the effects of evapotranspiration.

The incineration and burning of forest plants to clear land releases large amounts of CO, which contributes to global warming. Scientists also state that tropical deforestation releases 1.5 billion tons of carbon each year into the atmosphere.