Rising temperatures "will stunt rainforest growth"
Plants suffering in the heat could make global warming worse.
Global warming could cut the rate at which trees in tropical rainforests grow by as much as half, according to more than two decades' worth of data from forests in Panama and Malaysia. The effect — so far largely overlooked by climate modellers — could severely erode or even remove the ability of tropical rainforests to remove carbon dioxide from the air as they grow.
Read the story here.
Comments
Dear Dr Hopkin,
We were very interested to read your recent News in Nature, on the changing rate of forest growth in relation to temperature.
We have found what appears to be broad scale evidence of this relationship in the year-to-year CO2 signal, with a strong positive correlation between temperatures over equatorial areas and annual Co2 increment (Adams and Piovesan 2005. Long series relationships between global interannual CO2 increment and climate: Evidence for stability and change in role of the tropical and boreal-temperate zones. Chemosphere, 59: 1595-1612.2005). The signal follows temperature far more closely than precipitation, and of course given what is known about the year-to-year CO2 signal the source of variability is largely terrestrial and biotic.
We are wondering if you can suggest a way in which we could integrate our very broad scale empirical approach with the local scale approach used by Feeley. At the very least we consider that our findings need mentioning in the context of what Feeley et al. found.
Yours sincerely,
Gianluca Piovesan and Jonathan Adams
Posted by: Gianluca Piovesan & Jonathan M Adams | August 12, 2007 07:12 PM
Dear Dr Hopkin,
We were very interested to read your recent News and Views article in
Nature, on the changing rate of forest growth in relation to
temperature.
We have found what appears to be broad scale evidence of this
relationship in the year-to-year CO2 signal, with a strong positive
correlation between temperatures over equatorial areas and annual Co2
increment (Adams J.M. & G. Piovesan 2005. Long series relationships between global interannual CO2 increment and climate: Evidence for stability and change in role of the tropical and boreal-temperate zones. Chemosphere, 59: 1595-1612). The signal follows
temperature far more closely than precipitation, and of course given
what is known about the year-to-year CO2 signal the source of
variability is largely terrestrial and biotic.
We are wondering if you can suggest a way in which we could integrate
our very broad scale empirical approach with the local scale approach
used by Feeley. At the very least we consider that our findings need
mentioning in the context of what Feeley et al. found.
Yours sincerely,
Gianluca Piovesan and Jonathan Adams
[Editor's note: pls note that Michael Hopkin was the news reporter on this piece and is not a researcher. But we hope the researchers themselves may be able to address your question.]
Posted by: Gianluca Piovesan & Jonathan M Adams | August 12, 2007 07:14 PM
The scare-tactics of the global warming community is on! This is once again a well crafted, professional piece of totally twisted couplings of separated facts. First the rain forest is bad: They absorb light and capture heat. Then we are tolled that the rainforest cannot grow fast enough to absorb CO2! Why not just cry: CO2, CO2, CO2! Scare, scare, scare! Hopefully people will soon discover what strange claims are made in the name of the life-essential CO2. The next thing to propose is probably to "cut down on the excessive mass of surplus human beings" to cut the "dangerous" CO2 at all costs. The discussion has turned into the surreal a long time ago. Congratulations IPCC you won, the world, progress and humanity has lost.
Posted by: S.F. | August 12, 2007 10:13 PM
k
i hate science
Posted by: cassie | August 13, 2007 02:04 AM