Fig. 5: Changes in atmospheric processes and their relationship with forest cover change in the southern Amazon basin.

a, c, e Spatial patterns of a changes in Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), c distance of evapotranspiration (ET) moisture transport and e the fraction of moisture from ET remaining in the local grid, all calculated for the period 1982–2016. Stippling indicates regions where the trend is statistically significant (p <  0.05). b, d, f For individual spatial points, the relationships are shown between changes in b CAPE against weighted forest cover (FC_w), d distance of ET transport against weighted forest cover in the downwind direction (FC_dw; “Methods”), and f the fraction of moisture from ET remaining in the local grid against forest cover. All points in (b, d, f) are in the southern Amazon basin, with each point representing a 1° × 1° gridbox, and calculations for the period 1982–2016. In (b, d, f), the black lines are a fitted linear regression, and the shaded red areas represent the 95% confidence intervals of the regressions. Source data are provided with this paper.