Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Science

Why cutting down rainforests may be driving 28,000 heat deaths a year

Tropical forests are hot, steamy places. But when large numbers of trees are cut down, they get even hotter. Our recent research in Nature Climate Change shows that clearing large areas of the rainforest exposes hundreds of millions of people to higher temperatures, increasing heat stress (when the...

Why cutting down rainforests may be driving 28,000 heat deaths a year
Image: Phys.org
Tropical forests are hot, steamy places. But when large numbers of trees are cut down, they get even hotter. Our recent research in Nature Climate Change shows that clearing large areas of the rainforest exposes hundreds of millions of people to higher temperatures, increasing heat stress (when the body's way of controlling temperature fails) and, in some cases, contributing to death.

Originally published at Phys.org

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