# Would Forest Regrowth Compensate for Climate Change in the Amazon Basin?
## 1 Introduction  
The land surface plays an important role in global energy, the hydrologic cycle, and carbon balance. Land cover change (LCC) directly alters surface-absorbed solar radiation, longwave radiation, and atmospheric turbulence. These alterations lead to changes in fluxes of momentum, heat, and water vapor through the mediation of albedo, evapotranspiration (ET), roughness, and CO\({}_{2}\)[1, 2]. Land cover changes through atmospheric feedback can have a striking impact on the local, regional, and even global mean climate as well as climatic extremes and variability [3]. While 25 to 35% of Amazon precipitation is related to regional moisture recycling [4], during the rainy season, moist air from the basin travels along the Andes and provides precipitation over the La Plata basin too [5, 6] through tele-connection processes. Therefore, any changes to land surface biophysical characteristics, even at the local scale, may alter the climate over the entire basin. LCC in the Amazon basin has been studied to be one of the driving forces for climate change [7, 8]. It affects the energy, carbon and water balance, and land-atmosphere interactions. It alters evapotranspiration and the hydrologic cycle more broadly which further affects Amazon rainforest stability [9], primarily through a reduction in moisture recycling [10, 11]. Such changes have been investigated across the Amazon basin using globaland regional climate models: notably, via complete deforestation scenarios e.g., [12; 13; 14; 15; 16] or scenarios ranging from low to extreme conversion of forest e.g., [17; 18]. The conversion of forest to cropland in the Amazon Basin has resulted in a decrease in precipitation (P) [15], a decrease in ET [19; 20], an increase in temperature (T) [18], and also indirectly intensifies fire occurrence [21]. Due to deforestation, the onset of the rainy season has also delayed 11 days, on average, over the last thirty years across the highly deforested areas in the state of Rondonia, Brazil [19]. In addition, the length of the dry season has been increased by one month in some areas [22; 23; 24; 25; 26] and drought conditions have also been exacerbated as a result of deforestation [27; 28; 29]. The spatial scale of LCC from local to regional to global is very important in land-atmosphere interaction analysis [30; 31]. The most recent deforestation in the Amazon basin occurred at small-scale patches (less than 1 ha) during 2008-2014 [27]. In addition, the temporal scale of analysis is also important in understanding the magnitude and amplitude of the effects. For instance, Ref. [28] found that the impact of land surface variability on climate is more apparent at monthly timescales than at other timescales. Ref. [29] analyzed the interactions between clouds, rains, and the underlying land surface through biosphere processes in southwestern Rondonia, Brazil. They found that land-atmosphere interactions are higher during the dry season (May-November) than the wet season (December-April). They also hypothesized more complex interactions between cloudiness, moisture transport, and fluxes during the wet season. When considering the effects of LCC at the basin scale, the land-atmosphere interaction is more intense [22]. For instance, Ref. [30] used IPCC CMIP3 models and found an increase in the annual mean temperature between 0.1 and 3.8 \({}^{\circ}\)C and a decrease in the annual precipitation of about 10-30% which could lead to changes in seasonality. Also, Ref. [11] argued that upon reaching 40% reduction in Amazon forest cover, wet and dry season rainfall totals may reduce by 12% and 21%, respectively. However, the magnitude and the location of rainfall changes is uncertain [31; 32]. Ref. [14] also used a GCM to capture the climate response to Amazon deforestation. They found that the sensitivity of climate to LCC depends on the initial tree cover and type of irrigation. Using satellite observations to assess crop responses to drought in the basin, Refs.