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A Revelation About Trees Is Messing With Climate Calculations

https://web.archive.org/web/20230930090902/https://www.wired.com/story/a-revelation-about-trees-is-messing-with-climate-calculations/

Trees make clouds by releasing small quantities of vapors called “sesquiterpenes.” Scientists are learning more—and it’s making climate models hazy.

2 comments

LoraxEleven

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That's pretty damn interesting.

benjhm

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Biogenic cloud-seeding molecules are important, but this is not new - iirc back in the 1980s even president Reagan picked up on this to suggest that the "pollution" from trees was worse than from cars. There are also phytoplankton in the ocean that release cloud-seeding nuclei. Such effects are already included in complex earth-system models to some extent, so it's not a magic 'new' factor, rather a refinement of the feedback strengths.