Data and code for: A century of reforestation reduced anthropogenic warming in the eastern United States

Restoring and preserving the world’s forests are promising natural pathways to mitigate some aspects of climate change. In addition to regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, forests modify surface and near-surface air temperatures through biophysical processes. In the eastern United States (EUS), widespread reforestation during the 20th century coincided with an anomalous lack of warming, raising questions about reforestation’s contribution to local cooling and climate mitigation. Using new cross-scale approaches and multiple independent sources of data, we uncovered links between reforestation and the response of both surface and air temperature in the EUS. Ground- and satellite-based observations showed that EUS forests cool the land surface by 1–2 °C annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest cooling effect during midday in the growing season, when cooling is 2 to 5 °C. Young forests (20–40 years) have the strongest cooling effect on surfa..., The data utilized in this study is openly available and can be accessed via the links provided below. The data has been processed in accordance with the methodology outlined in the methods section of the paper.

Data
Purpose in Paper
Specific Figure in Paper
URL

Delaware Air Temperature & Precipitation Dataset
Gridded 0.5 ° time series of monthly Ta
Fig 1c,Fig 5d
https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.UDel_AirT_Precip.html

North American Carbon Program Forest Age Maps
Gridded 1 km forest age estimates
Fig 1a, Fig 5c
https://daac.ornl.gov/NACP/guides/NA_Tree_Age.html

FOREcasting SCEnarios of Land-use Change  (FORE-SCE) Backcasting Grids
Historical Land Use Change - 250 m resolution
Fig 1b, Fig 5b, Fig 5d
https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/59d3c73de4b05fe04cc3d1d1

MODIS Land Surface Temperature Product (MYD11A1v6.1)
Remotely Sensed Surface Temperature
Fig 3a, 3b
https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/myd11a1v061/

Ameriflux Tower Data
Tower Data for Paired and Flux Tower Sy..., All the data can be processed using open-source programs such as R or Python. , # Data and code for: A century of reforestation reduced anthropogenic warming in the eastern United States

The dataset used in the study consists of various sources of data that were utilized to investigate the links between reforestation and the response of surface and air temperature in the Eastern United States. The data includes gridded time series of monthly air temperature, forest age estimates, historical land use change data, remotely sensed surface temperature data, tower data for paired and flux tower syntheses, historical air temperature data, and gridded mesoscale air temperature data. The data was processed in accordance with the methodology outlined in the methods section of the paper, and was used to generate various figures throughout the paper to support the experimental procedures and results.

## Description of the Data and file structure

The data and file structure for this project include an R Markdown file named Dryad_Figs.Rmd which produces the main text figures...