forests

Jul

2023

Podcast: What if water is more important than carbon?

Great podcast [1]: “A conversation with Alpha Lo, physicist and writer of the Climate Water Project, about the importance of slowing water down, the connection between drought, fire, and floods, and the massive role water plays in heating and cooling our planet. Trees create rain not the other way around. There is just so much to learn about water in all its forms, what it does when it’s part of a healthy watercycle or what it does when it isn’t (e.g. massive floods around the world). With Alpha Lo we try to start to unpack the massive role water plays in heating and cooling of our planet and argue why we should absolutely pay way more attention to water and the watercycle. Potentially it is more important and relevant in the climate discussion than carbon.

[1] https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2023/07/21/alpha-lo/

Oct

2022

The rainforest’s water pump

It’s (almost) all about forests and water: An investigation of naturally occurring water recycling in rainforests finally marries the results of global climate models with observations. Alarmingly, it also suggests that deforestation can greatly reduce tropical rainfall.

Join us next week for much more insights in our Climate Landscapes Conference.

Jun

2022

Revealing the widespread potential of forests to increase low level cloud cover

Forests and their impacts on low level clouds:

However, changing the forest cover can further affect the climate system through biophysical effects. One such effect that is seldom studied is how afforestation can alter the cloud regime, which can potentially have repercussions on the hydrological cycle, the surface radiation budget and on planetary albedo itself. Here we provide a global scale assessment of this effect derived from satellite remote sensing observations. We show that for 67% of sampled areas across the world, afforestation would increase low level cloud cover, which should have a cooling effect on the planet. We further reveal a dependency of this effect on forest type, notably in Europe where needleleaf forests generate more clouds than broadleaf forests.