As Temperatures Increase, So Do Plants' Ability To Fight Off Climate Change

Plants don’t just reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – they actually create clouds that cool the atmosphere as the temperature increases, according to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Specifically, scientists found, that as the temperatures warm, plants release gases, or natural aerosols, that then act like the world’s natural air conditioner.

“Everyone knows the scent of the forest,” researcher Ari Asmi of the University of Helskini said in a press release. “That scent is made up of these gases.”

Previous to the study, scientists knew that some aerosols cool the climate as they reflect sunlight and form cloud droplets, including aerosols caused by humans. However, the effect of biogenic aerosol was less understood.

The answer, as the study shows, is that as temperatures warm and plants release more of these gases, the concentrations of particles active in cloud formation increase.

As Pauli Paasonen, who led the story, said in the release, “Plants, by reacting to changes in temperature, also moderate these changes.”

However, before people ditch their hybrids for Hummers, Paasonen warns that such emissions globally counter approximately just 1 percent of climate warming globally.

“This does not save us from climate warming,” he said.

Though, as he explained, “Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models.” Thus, understanding this better may help to reduce uncertainties in climate change models.

Furthermore, the study showed that in rural, heavily-wooded areas such as Finland and Canada, as much as 30 percent of the effects of climate warming may be counteracted.

In all, the researchers gathered data from 11 different sites around the world, measuring the concentrations of aerosol particles in the atmosphere as well as the concentrations of plant gases, the temperature and reanalysis estimates for the height of the boundary layer, which is the layer of air closest to Earth.

In the end, it was this latter variable that turned out to be most key and one of the reasons why the phenomenon was not discovered before as the estimates for boundary layer height are difficult to find and have only recently been improved to a point where they can be accurately taken.