Impacts of land-surface heterogeneities and Amazonian deforestation on the wet season onset in southern Amazon

Abstract

Continued Amazonian deforestation perturbs the surface turbulent fluxes which are important for building the conditions for the wet season onset in the southern Amazon. This work evaluates the impacts of tropical deforestation on the onset and development of the Amazonian rainy season using a weather typing approach. We use 19-year simulations (2001–2019) with the Regional Earth System Model from the Institute Pierre Simone Laplace (RegIPSL) with twin control/deforestation experiments. RegIPSL represents the dominant modes or the atmospheric circulation patterns (CPs) of the daily-to-decadal circulation variability in tropical South America, and the evolution of atmospheric and surface conditions along the dry-to-wet transition period. According to RegIPSL, forests and crops contribute differently to the onset. During the dry-to-wet transition period, croplands/grasslands present a stronger shallow convection driven by a higher atmospheric temperature. Large-scale subsidence suppresses low-level convection in the region and deep convection only persists over forests where the atmosphere presents more convective potential energy. After the onset and the establishment of large-scale rainfall structures, both land covers behave similarly in terms of surface fluxes. Deforestation decreases the frequency of the CP typically linked to the onset. Changes in the spatial structure and frequency of the wet season CPs reinforce the hypothesis of a deforestation-induced dry season lengthening. Variations in the CP frequency and characteristic rainfall have opposite effects on accumulated rainfall during the dry-to-wet transition period. Whereas alterations in frequency are associated with a regional circulation response, changes in the CP characteristic rainfall correspond to a local response to deforestation.