Name: ‘We Need to Hear These Poor Trees Scream’: Unchecked Global Warming Means Big Trouble for Forests - Inside Climate News
Brand: insideclimatenews.org
SKU: insideclimatenews-org-3
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

‘We Need to Hear These Poor Trees Scream’: Unchecked Global Warming Means Big Trouble for Forests - Inside Climate News

preview

Tim Brodribb has been measuring all the different ways global warming kills trees for the past 20 years. With a microphone, he says, you can hear them take their last labored breaths. During blistering heat waves and droughts, air bubbles invade their delicate, watery veins, cracking them open with an audible pop. And special cameras can film the moment their drying leaves split open in a lightning bolt pattern, disrupting photosynthesis.Science, reviewed the last 10 years of research on tree mortality, concluding that forests are in big trouble if global warming&nbsp; continues at the present pace. Most trees alive today won’t be able to survive in the climate expected in 40 years, Brodribb said. The negative impacts of warming and drying are already outpacing the fertilization benefits of increased carbon dioxide., who was not involved in the new research.&nbsp;&nbsp;has already weakened and killed hundreds of millions of trees, including Rocky Mountain lodgepole and piñon pines, as well as aspens.&nbsp;Elsewhere, African cedars and acacias are dying, South America’s Amazon rainforest is struggling, and junipers are declining in the Middle East. In Spain and Greece, global warming is shriveling oaks, and even in moist, temperate northern Europe, unusual droughts have stressed vast stands of beech forests.published in the journal Global Change Biology zoomed in on the evergreen forests in the Stubai Valley in Tirol, Austria. At 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of global warming, which will be reached during the last few decades of this century, the dense stands of spruce and fir will change to a mix of oaks and pines, more like forests on the drier southern fringes of the Alps in Italy, the projections showed.last fall on the Navajo Nation, where the nutritious nuts have been part of cultural tradition for centuries.Accurate new information is also valuable for climate policy, because many national&nbsp; carbon-reduction targets based on the Paris climate agreement include tree planting as a key tool to reduce emissions. But rapid forest change and catastrophic die-offs could put a monkey wrench in those plans. And in addition to the direct tree-killing effects of heat and drought, interactions with other disturbances like insects and other pathogens will magnify forest die-offs, he said.said the conclusions in the new research weren’t surprising because she’s always been skeptical of the projected beneficial effects of carbon dioxide triggering photosynthesis in plants.“Some recent research shows that a lot of our forests may be genetically maladapted to the changing climate. We’re losing big trees faster and regeneration is not keeping up. This is not a sustainable pattern that we’re seeing,” she said.&nbsp;ICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going.Inside Climate News uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept this policy.Accept

Tim Brodribb has been measuring all the different ways global warming kills trees for the past 20 years. With a microphone, he says, you can hear them take their last labored breaths. During blistering heat waves and droughts, air bubbles invade their delicate, watery veins, cracking them open with an audible pop. And special cameras can film the moment their drying leaves split open in a lightning bolt pattern, disrupting photosynthesis.Science, reviewed the last 10 years of research on tree mortality, concluding that forests are in big trouble if global warming&nbsp; continues at the...

public

Bob Berwyn

Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonprofit, non-partisan newsroom dedicated to covering climate, energy and the environment. Our newsletter: http://bit.ly/2NcWMpo

‘We Need to Hear These Poor Trees Scream’: Unchecked Global Warming Means Big Trouble for Forests - Inside Climate News

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS