Deforestation and climate change are projected to increase heat stress risk in the Brazilian Amazon
Date
2021-10-01
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Springer Nature
Abstract
Land use change and deforestation can influence local temperature and climate. Here we use a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to assess the impact of savannization of the Amazon Basin on the wet-bulb globe temperature heat stress index under two climate change scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). We find that heat stress exposure due to deforestation was comparable to the effect of climate change under RCP8.5. Our findings suggest that heat stress index could exceed the human adaptation limit by 2100 under the combined effects of Amazon savannization and climate change. Moreover, we find that risk of heat stress exposure was highest in Northern Brazil and among the most socially vulnerable. We suggest that by 2100, savannization of the Amazon will lead to more than 11 million people will be exposed heat stress that poses an extreme risk to human health under a high emission scenario.
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© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Communications Earth and Environment, 2021, available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00275-8 . Keywords: climate change; climate sciences; environmental health; environmental impact.
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Citation
Alves de Oliveira, B.F., Bottino, M.J., Nobre, P. et al. Deforestation and climate change are projected to increase heat stress risk in the Brazilian Amazon. Commun Earth Environ 2, 207 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00275-8