Friday, September 16th, 2011, 2:50pm
There have been new studies released by Carnegie’s Global Ecology department that suggest that water evaporating from trees can help to cool the entire earth, as well as the area around the trees. It has been a widely accepted view that the evaporation of water cools the area around the source of the water. This is comparable to a person sweating, and with the evaporation of the sweat, their body cools off. Old research suggested that evaporation actually had a warming effect on the climate, because water vapor could act as a greenhouse gas when suspended in the atmosphere. They also claimed that the energy that was taken up by the process of evaporating water was released back into the environment when the water vapor condenses and precipitates. The old method of thinking said that evaporation, because of these two factors, could never affect the global balance of energy on our planet. However, the new research states that the increase of evaporated water in the sky leads to more clouds forming low in the atmosphere, which reflects the sun’s rays back into space, while causing the ones that do make it through to be dispersed over a larger area, cooling a much larger space. This has a slight cooling effect on the global scale. Though, the researchers are careful to state that this effect will not have a significant impact if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the same rate as we currently are.
This research could prove useful for forest preservationist efforts across the world. It could lead to new legislation preventing the clearing of forests, because of their ecological value. I seriously doubt that this will happen though, even though society at large sees global climate change as a problem, and there are clear solutions, there has been very little action to stop global warming. It seems that no matter the evidence of what will happen due to climate change, there will be no real response from the governments of the world.
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/43254
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110914161729.htm
1 comment:
This is really interesting, and I agree with you that even though information like this as well as other ways to prevent global warming and climate change, most likely nothing will be done about it. Information like this really could help conservationists get backup to help save ecosystems if governments would just take it seriously.
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