Tag Archives: reflection of sunlight

Deforestation Causes Cooling in northern U.S., Canada

Deforestation, considered by scientists to contribute significantly to global warming, has been shown by a Yale-led team to actually cool the local climate in northern latitudes, according to a paper published Nov. 17 in Nature.

“If you cut trees in the boreal region, north of 45 degrees latitude, you have a net cooling effect,” says Xuhui Lee, the study’s principal investigator and professor of meteorology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “You release carbon into the atmosphere by cutting down trees, but you increase the albedo effect — the reflection of sunlight.” (more…)

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