Rainforests & Global Climate
Understand the connection between rainforests and global climate — rainforests absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, store enormous amounts of carbon in their biomass, and generate rainfall through transpiration; when forests are burned or cleared, stored carbon is released as CO₂, accelerating climate change and disrupting regional rainfall patterns
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explain that rainforests absorb CO₂ and store carbon in their trees, acting as a carbon sink
- Describe how deforestation releases stored carbon back into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change
- Explain that transpiration from rainforest trees generates rainfall, and losing trees disrupts rain patterns
The lesson
You already know rainforests get cut down and that greenhouse gases trap heat around Earth. Here is the link between the two: as rainforest trees grow, they pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock that carbon away inside their trunks, branches, and roots. A place that stores carbon like this is called a carbon sink, and rainforests are some of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet.
A guide shows Ana a giant tree in a rainforest reserve. He tells her it has been locking away carbon since before her grandmother was born. When workers cut trees like this one and burn them to clear land for farms, all that stored carbon rushes back into the air as CO2 in a single afternoon, undoing decades of carbon storage at once.
Rainforest trees have a second climate job too. They release water vapor that helps rain clouds form nearby. Clear away enough trees, and that region can get drier, with rain patterns thrown off far beyond the forest itself.
Rainforests pull carbon out of the sky and help make rain fall, so cutting and burning them reverses both jobs and speeds up climate change.
Watch it
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.