If you decide to plant trees on Earth Day, it may be more efficient if you reside in Buenos Aires than if you live in New York. New study finds that tropical trees perform better when fighting against global warming than trees which grow in higher latitudes.

“Our study shows that only tropical rainforests are beneficial, which helps slow down global warming,” said team leader Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Forests affects our climate in many different ways: by absorbing carbon dioxide (the main gas of greenhouse effect) to help cooling down the planet, water evaporation, cloud formation, that helps preserving the planet cooler and the absorption of sunlight with their dark leaves, which is warming the Earth.

Trees that grow in snow covered places like Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia absorb sunlight that would otherwise be reflected back into space, bright white snow.

But tropical rainforests trap larger quantities of carbon dioxide and evaporate more water to produce clouds that reflect sunlight back into space.

“Tropical forests are like Earth’s air conditioning,” said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Bala, comrades.

Simulating the effects of deforestation in different parts of the world, including the study which was published on Apr 9 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that deforestation, which tropics is more devastating to the Earth’s climate than deforestation in higher latitudes, and trees among high latitudes might lead to warming.

But do not take ths facts like this is the time when you should take an axe and chop down all the trees that are not growing in tropics, scientists warn.

“The main reason why it aims to slow global warming, to protect nature,” said Caldeira. “It simply makes no sense to destroy natural ecosystems name of saving natural ecosystems.”