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Local biophysical climate feedback from vegetation responses to lower aerosol pollution

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Abstract

Aerosols can influence vegetation through multiple processes, yet the resulting biophysical climate feedback from the vegetation response remains poorly understood. Here, using an ensemble of Earth system models and an observation-based empirical model, we show that the vegetation response to complete removal of anthropogenic aerosols can either cool or warm the local climate by up to 0.039 ± 0.020 °C (multimodel mean ± intermodel standard deviation) through altering albedo and evapotranspiration. This feedback exhibits distinct latitudinal asymmetry, resulting, on average, in cooling (–0.0083 ± 0.0070 °C) in boreal regions, moderate cooling (–0.0036 ± 0.0017 °C) in temperate zones, and slight warming (0.0007 ± 0.0011 °C) in the tropics (excluding the Amazon). Future projections suggest that stringent aerosol control could amplify the local cooling effect of vegetation across most vegetated areas. These findings reveal a previously overlooked pathway by which aerosols influence vegetation climate effects, highlighting the need for integrated policies on air quality control and vegetation-based climate solutions.

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Data availability

The historical simulation of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6, the hist-piNTCF, hist-piAer and ssp370-lowNTCF simulations of the Aerosol Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project, and the ssp370 simulation of the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project are available at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/.

Code availability

The processing MATLAB codes are available at https://box.nju.edu.cn/f/6c15cf6a125e4a7eb0d4/.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (42375115 and 42130602), the Basic Research Program of Jiangsu Province (BK20240170), the ‘GeoX’ Interdisciplinary Project of Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling (20250104), and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Climate Change. The authors thank Dr. Ramdane Alkama for providing assistance in using the empirical model to estimate biophysical feedback from vegetation changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Joint International Research Laboratory of Atmospheric and Earth System Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Jun Ge, Xin Miao, Xin Huang, Bo Qiu & Weidong Guo

  2. Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Jun Ge, Bo Qiu & Weidong Guo

  3. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment Monitoring and Pollution Control, Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China

    Xu Yue

  4. Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Mengyuan Mu

  5. ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Mengyuan Mu

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  1. Jun Ge
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  2. Xu Yue
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  3. Mengyuan Mu
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Contributions

J.G. conceived and designed the overall study. J.G. performed the data analysis with help from X.Y., M.M., X.M., X.H., B.Q., and W.G. in the interpretation of the results. J.G. drafted the manuscript. All the authors discussed and revised the manuscript.

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Jun Ge.

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Ge, J., Yue, X., Mu, M. et al. Local biophysical climate feedback from vegetation responses to lower aerosol pollution.
npj Clim Atmos Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-025-01310-7

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