Commodity-driven deforestation doubles local warming from tropical forest loss

Tropical deforestation causes substantial changes to local climate, including strong daytime warming at the land surface. While deforestation is driven by a wide range of factors such as commodity production, shifting agriculture, and forestry, it remains unclear whether the local climate impacts of forest loss vary across these drivers. Using remotely sensed atmospheric and land-surface datasets, we examined whether the local warming due to tropical forest loss from 2001 to 2019 differed by deforestation driver. We find that forest loss consistently induced local daytime warming across the tropics that exceeds regional climate change over the same period, with 0.6 °C of warming in the Amazon, 0.47 °C in South-East Asia, and 0.18 °C in the Congo. In the Amazon, commodity-driven deforestation caused 0.66 °C of warming, more than double that from shifting agriculture (0.31 °C). Across the tropics, commodity-driven forest loss produced 0.02 °C warming per percentage point of forest loss, compared to 0.01 °C for shifting agriculture. This contrast reflects the biophysical differences between commodity-driven deforestation, typified by large scale, intensive conversion of forest to crops and pasture and shifting agriculture which often involves small-scale land clearance, land abandonment and vegetation regrowth. In the Congo where the predominant driver is shifting agriculture, smaller canopy reductions and vegetation recovery explain the weaker warming response. However, a projected shift toward commodity-driven deforestation, leading to larger reductions in leaf area index and greater increases in surface albedo, could substantially increase local warming. Expansion of commodity agriculture across the tropics will amplify local climate impacts, with serious consequences for communities in forest regions. Our findings highlight the need for climate, agriculture, and land-use policies that account for deforestation drivers. Preserving a mosaic of forest cover within agricultural landscapes can deliver significant local climate benefits and help safeguard livelihoods in tropical regions.