Abstract
The Amazon Basin has undergone rapid deforestation since the 1970s, causing biodiversity loss, regional climate shifts, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Yet its impact on tropical ocean–atmosphere coupled variability remains unknown. Using observational datasets and targeted coupled general circulation model experiments, here we find that Amazon deforestation has contributed substantially (~23%) to the observed weakening of Atlantic Niño variability since 1970. Observational analyses and model experiments reveal that local warming and drying associated with deforestation enhance the interhemispheric thermal contrast over the tropical Atlantic. The enhanced thermal contrast strengthens surface cross-equatorial southerly winds, which in turn reduce the sensitivity of zonal wind stress to the zonal sea surface temperature gradient, weakening the Bjerknes feedback and Atlantic Niño variability. The combined observational and modeling results highlight a critical influence of land surface changes on the dynamics of the tropical coupled ocean–atmosphere system.
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Data availability
The HadISST data are available at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/. The ECMWF ERA-5 data are available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets. The WHOI OAFlux data are available at https://oaflux.whoi.edu/data-access/. The ECMWF ORAS5 data are available at https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ocean-reanalysis-system-5. The annual deforestation and plantation rates during 1981–1990 from UNFAO-FRA 1990 are available at https://www.fao.org/4/t0830e/T0830E10.htm, and UNFAO-FRA 2020 forest data are available at https://fra-data.fao.org/assessments/fra/2020/BRA/home/overview/. The outputs from the CGCM experiments are available at South China Sea Ocean Data Center (https://data.scsio.ac.cn/metaData-detail/2001285407646916608).
Code availability
The analyses in this study were performed using NCAR Command Language (NCL). The codes for calculations can be found at https://pan.cstcloud.cn/s/huOsg96uRKM or on request from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (42330404, W2441014, 42406199, and 42192560), and the development fund of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SCSIO202208).
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X.W. and S.W. conceived the idea and designed the study. S.W. carried out the data analyses, conducted the numerical experiments, and wrote the initial version of the paper. C.W. and W.C. advised the research and substantively improved the paper. All authors discussed the results and helped improve the paper.
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Wei, S., Wang, C., Cai, W. et al. Amazon deforestation weakens Atlantic Niño variability. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69771-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69771-9
