The Amazon rainforest plays a crucial role in regulating Earth’s energy and water cycles. The full biophysical impact of deforestation, particularly when mediated by clouds, remains elusive. Using two decades of multisource satellite observations, we isolate biophysical signals of forest loss and present an observation of the all-sky biophysical feedback that integrates surface and atmospheric effects. We find that top-of-atmosphere (TOA) cooling in shortwave and longwave fluxes scales with forest loss fraction, with shortwave dominating. In high-loss areas, shortwave TOA cooling reaches 6.8 ± 0.6 watts per square meter, with cloud-driven albedo increases doubling the effect relative to surface brightening alone. These findings underscore the importance of cloud responses in estimating the climatic impact of forest cover change and support their integration into climate models and land-management policies.
Dror et al. (Thu,) studied this question.