Afforestation helps increase cloud cover, decreases temp: Study

NEW DELHI: A study published on Thursday, August 5, concluded that forests are key to moderating the climate and help in decreasing temperature by increasing low-level clouds.

Scientists are advocating a push for afforestation as key to fighting climate change. The researchers collected the data by observing satellite imagery. They concluded that the forest’s cooling effect is most evident in the needle-leaf forests.

Researchers said that the changing forest cover can have an additional impact on the changing cloud patterns and the hydrological cycle.

Forests are known to be carbon absorbers, however, their impact on the climate in other ways remains unclear. Gregory Duveiller, the lead author of the study, said that the data used for the study was provided by the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative. They noted that in forest regions of temperate, tropical, and arid regions where afforestation was undertaken, cloud cover increased by over 15 per cent over the years.

Clouds modulate the amount of energy reflected and absorbed by both the surface and the atmosphere, making them a crucial part of the climate system.