Appreciable effects on local temperature and precipitation result from the change in radiative and other characteristics associated with the loss of forest cover and replacement with grassland. As far as the atmospheric circulation is concerned, the monsoonal flow in both months is disturbed, as are the local Walker and Hadley circulations. It is found that it is the circulation change that exerts the greatest effect on moisture availability over the deforested region. Notable differences occur between the results of this experiment based on single region deforestation and previous simulations based on multi-region deforestation. In both cases, for example, the monsoonal flow is perturbed but the nature of the disruption differs. While the previous simulations indicated weakening of both the winter and summer monsoons, the current results show the opposite.
The impact of Southeast Asian deforestation differs from that in other tropical regions, particularly the Amazon, in two important respects. First, induced changes in local hydrological processes are not as important as elsewhere because of the dominant convergent flow and the nearby oceanic moisture sources. Second, a related point, the effect of deforestation occurs through the medium of the large-scale monsoon circulation of the region which acts to export the effects over a wider area.