The tropics is becoming hotter due to a combination of warming associated with deforestation and climate change—and that can reduce the ability of outdoor workers to perform their jobs safely. Researchers reporting in the journal One Earth on December 17 estimate how many safe working hours people living in the tropics have lost due to local temperature change associated with loss of trees during the past 15 years. “There is a huge disproportionate decrease in safe work hours associated with heat exposure for people in deforested locations versus people in forestated locations just over the past 15 or 20 years,” says first author Luke Parsons, a climate researcher at Duke University. “There is a small amount of climate change that has happened over the same 15-year period, but the incr...
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