We have simulated the deforestation of the Amazon, West Africa and Southeast Asia, both individually and simultaneously, using the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model II Global Climate Model. We have detected precipitation changes both locally and in remote regions. The latter are caused by global teleconnections that allow a local, tropically-generated signal to be propagated both throughout the Tropics and into the midlatitudes.

We have explored the physical mechanisms behind the teleconnections, and see that they are caused by 3 phenomenon: i) wind shear, which increases downstream of the deforested area and acts to suppress convection, ii) Rossby wave dynamics, in which the convection changes over the deforested region act as a wave source, and iii) moisture transport, by which areas affected by wave dynamics fail to move moisture to more distant regions.