- 1Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom (c.l.s.reddington@leeds.ac.uk)
- 2Fiocruz Regional Office of Piauí, National School of Public Health, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Teresina, Piauí, Brazil
- 3Department of Meteorology and Climate Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
Tropical deforestation causes local climate warming and is a potential risk to human health. Previous studies have shown tropical deforestation causes increased heat stress and reduces safe outdoor working hours, but the excess mortality due to warming from deforestation has not been quantified. Here we use remote sensing Earth observations to make the first pan-tropical assessment of the population-weighted warming due to tropical deforestation and the associated heat-related mortality burden. We focus our analysis on tropical deforestation that has occurred during 2001 to 2020. We use spatially explicit satellite datasets of annual forest cover change and land surface temperature to identify areas of surface warming that are co-located with forest loss and use data on population distribution to map population-weighted exposure to this warming. We use data on non-accidental mortality combined with relationships between heat exposure and excess mortality from the literature, to estimate the heat-attributable excess mortality due to nearby tropical deforestation. We examine how population exposure to deforestation-induced warming varies by region and by the degree of tropical forest loss. Overall, our analysis shows tropical deforestation during 2001 to 2020 exposed over 350 million people to local climate warming with population-weighted daytime land surface warming of 0.27°C. We estimate this warming results in around 28,000 additional deaths per year, accounting for 39% of the total heat-related mortality burden caused by global climate change and deforestation combined. The impacted populations (those living near deforested areas) are predominantly from lower-income groups, often traditional and indigenous communities, with limited access to adaptive measures to protect against the impacts of climate warming. Our analysis provides important evidence of the negative human health impacts of tropical deforestation at local, regional and national scales.
How to cite: Reddington, C., Smith, C., Butt, E., Baker, J., Oliveira, B., Yamba, E., and Spracklen, D.: Impacts of tropical deforestation on local climate and human health, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18273, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18273, 2025.
