**3. Results**

#### **3.1 Climate variables**

Air temperature and precipitation are strong controls on ecosystem productivity [2], and all study sites showed effective seasonality in terms of rainfall and air temperature (**Figures 2**–**5**), with precipitation events (rainy days) more frequent in the Amazon and Cerrado sites. The distribution of average air temperature throughout the year is linked to the intensity of precipitation at the sites, with great variability throughout the year. The Caatinga and Pantanal sites are the warmest throughout the day and in the first months of the year (**Figure 6**), a pattern that is inverted from

**Figure 2.** *Distribution of monthly air temperature data density by precipitation intensity at the Amazon site.*

**Figure 4.** *Distribution of monthly air temperature data density by precipitation intensity at the Caatinga site.*

**Figure 5.** *Distribution of monthly air temperature data density by precipitation intensity at the Pantanal site.*

**Figure 6.** *Hourly (left) and monthly (right) variation of air temperature at the analyzed sites.*

*The Relevance of Maintaining Standing Forests for Global Climate Balance: A Case Study… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110533*

**Figure 7.** *Violin plot of air temperature at the analyzed sites.*

**Figure 8.** *Hourly (left) and monthly (right) variation of vapor pressure deficit at the analyzed sites.*

June until October, when the Amazon and Cerrado sites are warmer than the others. The site with the highest average daily temperature is the Pantanal (**Figure 7**), with 31.6°C in October, while the Amazon site has the lowest temperatures (25.4°C) in April.

Despite being warmer during the day, the Pantanal site is colder at night, and due to its geographical location being susceptible to cold front events, it presents the lowest temperatures in the months of June to August. The Caatinga and Cerrado sites present values up to 3 times higher in VPD (**Figure 8**) than the others, while the Pantanal is close to the Amazon site in this variable. The VPD in the Amazon site practically doubles in value until October, concomitant with the lower precipitation rates and higher air temperature in the year.
