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Global climate forcing from albedo change caused by large-scale deforestation and reforestation: quantification and attribution of geographic variation

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Abstract

Large-scale deforestation and reforestation have contributed substantially to historical and contemporary global climate change in part through albedo-induced radiative forcing, with meaningful implications for forest management aiming to mitigate climate change. Associated warming or cooling varies widely across the globe due to a range of factors including forest type, snow cover, and insolation, but resulting geographic variation remains poorly described and has been largely based on model assessments. This study provides an observation-based approach to quantify local and global radiative forcings from large-scale deforestation and reforestation and further examines mechanisms that result in the spatial heterogeneity of radiative forcing. We incorporate a new spatially and temporally explicit land cover-specific albedo product derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer with a historical land use data set (Land Use Harmonization product). Spatial variation in radiative forcing was attributed to four mechanisms, including the change in snow-covered albedo, change in snow-free albedo, snow cover fraction, and incoming solar radiation. We find an albedo-only radiative forcing (RF) of −0.819 W m−2 if year 2000 forests were completely deforested and converted to croplands. Albedo RF from global reforestation of present-day croplands to recover year 1700 forests is estimated to be 0.161 W m−2. Snow-cover fraction is identified as the primary factor in determining the spatial variation of radiative forcing in winter, while the magnitude of the change in snow-free albedo is the primary factor determining variations in summertime RF. Findings reinforce the notion that, for conifers at the snowier high latitudes, albedo RF diminishes the warming from forest loss and the cooling from forest gain more so than for other forest types, latitudes, and climate settings.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by a grant from the NASA ROSES09 Science of Terra and Aqua Program through award NNX11AG53G as well as partially through NASA grant NNX14AI73G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

    Tong Jiao, Christopher A. Williams & Bardan Ghimire

  2. Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Bardan Ghimire

  3. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Jeffrey Masek

  4. USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, MD, USA

    Feng Gao

  5. School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA

    Crystal Schaaf

Authors
  1. Tong Jiao
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  2. Christopher A. Williams
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  3. Bardan Ghimire
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  4. Jeffrey Masek
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  5. Feng Gao
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  6. Crystal Schaaf
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher A. Williams.

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Jiao, T., Williams, C.A., Ghimire, B. et al. Global climate forcing from albedo change caused by large-scale deforestation and reforestation: quantification and attribution of geographic variation. Climatic Change 142, 463–476 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1962-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1962-8

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