Simulated Local and remote biophysical effects of afforestation over Southeast United States in boreal summer

Afforestation as a climate-change mitigation strategy has been given considerable attention in recent decades. To further fully assess the potential effects of afforestation over the Southeast United States (SEUS), we design 80 initial value ensemble experiments and 2 long-term quasi-equilibrium experiments in a fully coupled community climate system model version 3.5 (CCSM3.5). Model results show that afforestation over SEUS not only has a local cooling effect on surface air temperature, but also has remote warming effects on temperature over the adjacent regions of SEUS in boreal summer (JJA). Precipitation is found an increase over SEUS (local effect) and a decrease over the adjacent regions (remote effect) in JJA. The local cooling on surface temperature and increase in precipitation effects over SEUS in JJA are driven by the changes in evapotranspiration and latent heat flux. The remote warming on surface temperature and decrease in precipitation effects over the adjacent regions are caused by descending anomalies that induced by ascending anomalies over SEUS.