Boreal deforestation plays an important role in affecting regional and global climate. In this study, the regional temperature variation induced by future boreal deforestation in European Russia boreal forest region was simulated based on future land cover change and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. This study firstly tested and validated the simulation results of the WRF model. Then the land cover datasets in different years (2000 as baseline year, 2010, and 2100) was used in the WRF model to explore the impacts of boreal deforestation on the near-surface temperature. The results indicated that the WRF model has good ability to simulate the temperature change in European Russia. The land cover change in European Russia boreal forest region, which will be characterized by the conversion from boreal forests to croplands (boreal deforestation) in the future 100 years, will lead to significant change of the near-surface temperature. The regional annual temperature will decrease by 0.58°C in the future 100 years, resulting in cooling effects to some extent and making the near-surface temperature decrease in most seasons except the spring. 1. Introduction According to the fourth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007, IPCC AR4), there is a probability of more than 90 percent that human activities have affected the climate [1], mainly through two approaches: fossil fuel burning and land cover change. There is a consensus among the scientists that fossil fuel burning can lead to increase in the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere and further results in the global warming, while the impacts of land cover change on the climate system at the local, regional, and global scales have become one of the research hotspots. Terrestrial land cover is an important component of the climate system. It is the most direct source not only of the atmospheric heat, but also of the atmospheric moisture. Therefore, land cover change will directly affect the surface-atmosphere interactions and further influence the atmospheric thermodynamic characteristics. The land use activities significantly changed the regional land cover and exerted great impacts on the climate system at regional scale, including temperature, evapotranspiration, precipitation, wind, and air pressure. The impacts of land cover change on climate can be divided into two major categories, that is, biogeochemical and biogeophysical impacts [2]. The biogeochemical processes mainly refer to greenhouse gas emissions caused by the land cover change, changing the
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