Clearing rainforest can shrink regional rainfall by breaking moisture recycling
Tropical forests pump vast water vapor into the atmosphere through transpiration. That vapor often falls again downwind as rain that sustains farther forests, farms, and rivers.
Replace canopy with pasture or cropland and the aerial river weakens: less evaporation, hotter surfaces, and in some basins a measurable drop in wet-season totals. Deforestation is thus a local climate lever, not only a land-cover change.
Rainforest makes its own weather engine. Cut enough trees and the downpour that once fed the next stand may never fully return.
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