For decades, the case for saving tropical forests has been cast in terms of carbon. Trees sequester vast quantities of it; razing them pumps more into the air. But new research reminds us that the destruction of rainforests has consequences that arrive long before the carbon accounting is tallied: It makes people hotter, sometimes lethally so. A study published in Nature Climate Change estimates that deforestation across the tropics exposes more than 300 million people to higher local temperatures and is linked to 28,000 heat-related deaths each year. Using satellite data between 2001 and 2020, the researchers mapped forest loss across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia and compared this with land-surface warming and mortality records. In places where trees were felled, more than a third of all heat-related deaths could be traced back to deforestation. The finding gives scientific ballast to what farmers in Brazil and villagers in Borneo have long observed. “The common answer was that deforestation makes their world so much hotter,” Erik Meijaard, who interviewed thousands of people on the island in 2008, told Mongabay in 2019. In Borneo, studies show that cleared land is on average 1.7° Celsius (3° Fahrenheit) warmer than intact forest, with oil palm plantations registering extremes of 2.8-6.5°C (5-11.7°F). “Sit under a forest or in a big clearing on a sunny day and you will feel the difference. Forests are cool and clearings are hot,” said Douglas Sheil, a professor at Wageningen University and Research. The science is straightforward. Trees provide…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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