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A revelation about trees is messing with climate calculations (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago by Treevan@aussie.zone to c/treehuggers@slrpnk.net

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Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty in climate predictions.

In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Dada's team establishes a new heavy hitter in cloud creation: a kind of chemical released by trees.

The role of trees in seeding clouds is important, because it suggests what the sky above some regions might be like if governments manage to tamp down sulfur emissions.

In a world with less pollution, plants and trees will become more dominant drivers of cloud formation, an echo of the premodern world.

While anthropogenic emissions dominate cloud formation in populated areas, plant volatiles dominate over more pristine land elsewhere.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Depending on location, cloud cover can reflect sunlight away from land and ocean that would otherwise absorb its heat—a rare perk in the warming world.

The other half nucleates around vapors released by living things or machines, like the sulfur dioxide that arises from burning fossil fuels.

Her team of scientists from around the world wanted to re-create the air above forests, because a “pristine” atmosphere hints at what cloud formation was like before industrialization.

In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Dada’s team establishes a new heavy hitter in cloud creation: a kind of chemical released by trees.

Dada’s new work focuses on an overlooked class of less abundant volatiles called sesquiterpenes, which smell woody, earthy, citrusy, or spicy, depending on the molecule and type of plant or microbe that emits them.

The role of trees in seeding clouds is important, because it suggests what the sky above some regions might be like if governments manage to tamp down sulfur emissions.

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