Progressive Midlatitude Afforestation: Impacts on Clouds, Global Energy Transport, and Precipitation

Abstract

Abstract Vegetation influences the atmosphere in complex and nonlinear ways, such that large-scale changes in vegetation cover can drive changes in climate on both local and global scales. Large-scale land surface changes have been shown to introduce excess energy to one hemisphere, causing a shift in atmospheric circulation on a global scale. However, past work has not quantified how the climate response scales with the area of vegetation. Here, the response of climate to linearly increasing the area of forest cover in the northern midlatitudes is systematically evaluated. This study shows that the magnitude of afforestation of the northern midlatitudes determines the local climate response in a nonlinear fashion, and the authors identify a threshold in vegetation-induced cloud feedbacks—a concept not previously addressed by large-scale vegetation manipulation experiments. Small increases in tree cover drive compensating cloud feedbacks, while latent heat fluxes reach a threshold after sufficiently large increases in tree cover, causing the troposphere to warm and dry, subsequently reducing cloud cover. Increased absorption of solar radiation at the surface is driven by both surface albedo changes and cloud feedbacks. This study shows how atmospheric cross-equatorial energy transport changes as the area of afforestation is incrementally increased. The results highlight the importance of considering both local and remote climate effects of large-scale vegetation change and explore the scaling relationship between changes in vegetation cover and resulting climate impacts.