Tropical Rainforest Climate Change

Bush Professor John R.

Tropical rainforest climate change. Tropical rainforests are among the most threatened ecosystems globally due to large-scale fragmentation as a result of human activity. Climate change a tipping point for tropical rainforests. In some cases tropical rainforests are expected to have higher storm intensity and like temperate rainforests.

Tropical rainforests do it better. Flenley and William D. By protecting rainforest habitat for endangered species Rainforest Trust prevents carbon emissions and safeguards the planets resilience to climate change.

Forest options for climate mitigation include avoided forest loss improved natural forest management afforestation defined by the UNFCCC as the direct human-induced. Here we show that at current carbon market prices the protection of tropical forests can generate investible carbon amounting to 18 11 GtCO2e yr1 globally. Tropical rainforests store a lot of carbon as living biomass.

Observed changes to tropical rainforests include fluctuations in rainfall patterns causing slow drying out of the rainforest. Despite their importance tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. Habitat fragmentation caused by geological processes such as volcanism and climate change occurred in the past.

Forests in tropical and temperate regions have a cooling effect whereas boreal forests found in high northern latitudes make their climate warmer. We develop bioclimatic models of spatial distribution for the regionally endemic rainforest vertebrates and use these models to predict the effects of climate warming on species distributions. Gosling Editors Tropical Rainforest Responses to Climatic Change Second Edition Published in association with Praxis Publishing Chichester UK Professor Mark B.

All forests make the world wetter by sending a huge amount of water vapour into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration. Most Asian rainforests appear to be suffering more from changes in land use than from the changing climate. As they photosynthesise and grow tropical forests remove enormous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere reducing global warming.