Chopping down areas of tropical rainforest is causing rising temperatures linked to thousands of deaths

Dominick Spracken, CC BY-ND

Tropical forests are hot, steamy places. But when large numbers of trees are cut down, they get even hotter. Our recent research 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.

Research suggests that this could be contributing to 28,000 heat-related deaths each year across the tropics every year.