At global scale, land-surface climate effects may be governed more by radiation than by local evaporative cooling
WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
Earth-system-model experiments altered surface albedo or water availability over large latitudinal bands. Although hydrologic changes strongly affected local temperatures through evapotranspiration, their spatially integrated global temperature signal was dominated by radiative changes, approximately 0.4 K per W m−2 change in top-of-atmosphere net short-wave radiation. Regional cloud response strongly modified the effect.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
Local cooling and global climate effect are not interchangeable metrics. Land-cover decisions can have large local hydrologic consequences while their global biophysical temperature signal follows a different mechanism through planetary albedo and clouds.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
The core experiments are idealized and rely heavily on one Earth-system model; cloud sensitivity is model-dependent. The authors compare against multi-model experiments, but project-scale land decisions should not be converted directly into a universal temperature factor.
SOURCE
Nature Communications — primary study
View original evidence ↗
Idealized Earth-system experiments found global-mean temperature response scaling with planetary-albedo change even when local hydrologic effects were strong.
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