Remote impacts of maritime continent deforestation on early summer precipitation across Asia

Deforestation in the Indo-Pacific Maritime Continent (MC) has intensified in recent decades, yet its remote impacts on Asian monsoon precipitation remain inadequately understood. Using idealized land-use perturbation experiments with the Community Earth System Model, we demonstrate that MC deforestation reorganizes early-summer (May–June) precipitation across Asia through large-scale circulation changes. Our results show that Meiyu precipitation, the early-summer rainy season along the subtropical East Asian coastal zone (SEAC), is suppressed by strengthened subsidence and column drying, whereas precipitation over the Indian Peninsula increases under enhanced ascent and vertically integrated moisture-flux convergence. Precipitation characteristics also shift regionally: the SEAC exhibits simultaneous reductions in both frequency and intensity, the Indian Peninsula shows increases in both metrics, and the MC itself experiences fewer but more intense events. A joint frequency–intensity analysis reveals that these precipitation patterns reflect regional thermodynamic and dynamic controls, where reduced near-surface humidity and equivalent potential temperature suppress event initiation, while elevated values facilitate initiation, and variations in column moisture and moisture-flux convergence regulate precipitation intensity. Collectively, these results identify a land-use–driven teleconnection through which localized deforestation in the MC remotely modulates regional circulation and Meiyu precipitation, highlighting the central role of tropical land–atmosphere coupling in shaping Asian hydroclimate variability.