Effects of deforestation events on atmospheric dynamics using Lagrangian reanalysis data

Deforestation in the Amazon basin has the potential to affect regional atmospheric circulations, possibly causing changes in the moisture transport by altering the regional Hadley and Walker cells (Zhang et al.1996). Previous studies that modelled the atmosphere under different extreme deforestation scenarios have shown that deforestation in the Amazon basin could increase the length and frequency of dry seasons in the Southern Amazon, while an increase of rain is expected in the Northern Amazon (e.g. Espinoza et al., 2019; Ruiz-Vasquez et al., 2020). Beyond climate models, it is also possible to trace the effect of past deforestation on the atmosphere using a Lagrangian transport model applied on atmospheric reanalysis data. Using the FLEXPART global simulations on the ERA-5 ECMWF reanalysis dataset (1959-2022), we are able to track air parcels through time and space, making it possible to locate the origin of moisture and latent heat, and quantify how global atmospheric circulation is affected by air transport from deforested areas.