A new paper appeared »Tropical deforestation causes large reductions in observed precipitation«, indicating how (much) deforestation and precipitations in the tropics are linked:
Here we show reduced precipitation over deforested regions across the tropics. Our results arise from a pan-tropical assessment of the impacts of 2003–2017 forest loss on precipitation using satellite, station-based and reanalysis datasets. The effect of deforestation on precipitation increased at larger scales, with satellite datasets showing that forest loss caused robust reductions in precipitation at scales greater than 50 km. The greatest declines in precipitation occurred at 200 km, the largest scale we explored, for which 1 percentage point of forest loss reduced precipitation by 0.25 ± 0.1 mm per month. […] We estimate that future deforestation in the Congo will reduce local precipitation by 8–10% in 2100. Our findings provide a compelling argument for tropical forest conservation to support regional climate resilience.