A study looking at land and atmosphere interactions in the Amazon Basin across four decades found that 52-72% of the rainfall decline in the southern Amazon is due to large-scale deforestation.
Between 1980 and 2019, annual precipitation in the southern Amazon declined by 8-11%, with most of the region losing on average 7.7% of its forest cover over largely the same period.
The research also indicates that climate models might underestimate the contribution of deforestation to precipitation reduction by as much as 50%, which could mean that rainfall thresholds in the Amazon could be crossed earlier than expected.
