Predominant regional biophysical cooling from recent land cover changes in Europe

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14890-0
• Publication Date: 2020-02-26T11:03:14Z
• Authors: Bo Huang; Xiangping Hu; Geir-Arne Fuglstad; Xu Zhou; Wenwu Zhao; Francesco Cherubini
• Keywords: Land Cover

Around 70 Mha of land cover changes (LCCs) occurred in Europe from 1992 to 2015. Despite LCCs being an important driver regional climate variations, their temperature effects at a continental scale have not yet been assessed. Here, we integrate maps historical with model investigate air and humidity effects. We find average change -0.12 ± 0.20 °C, widespread cooling (up -1.0 °C) western central summer spring. At scale, the mean is mainly correlated agriculture abandonment (cropland-to-forest transitions), but new approach based on ridge-regression decomposing individual transitions shows opposite responses cropland losses gains between eastern Europe. Effects European are non-negligible region-specific, ignoring land-climate biophysical interactions may lead sub-optimal mitigation adaptation strategies.