Water plays a major role for our planet, not only at the surface, but in the atmosphere too |

Water plays a major role for our planet not only in its liquid form at the surface. In the atmosphere too, it considerably affects our lives as well as weather and climate. Clouds and rainfall are one example. Water vapor, the gaseous form of water, also plays a prominent role on Earth. It is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, without it the Earth would be a frozen planet.
 ~This knowledge is also of paramount importance for the general climate research. The temperature of the tropopause decides on the input of water vapor into the stratosphere: The higher the water vapor content in the stratosphere; the higher the surface temperatures increase. Anthropogenic climate change also has an effect on the temperature of the tropopause, and this effect could become more evident in the coming decades.
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An unprecedented study combining projections of future climate |

Trees can slow the warming of our planet by taking carbon out of the air, but only if they’re healthy:

Predicting long-term trends in forest growth requires accurate characterization of how the relationship between forest productivity and climatic stress varies across climatic regimes. Using a network of over two million tree-ring observations spanning North America and a space-for-time substitution methodology, we forecast climate impacts on future forest growth. We explored differing scenarios of increased water-use efficiency (WUE) due to CO2-fertilisation, which we simulated as increased effective precipitation. In our forecasts: (1) climate change negatively impacted forest growth rates in the interior west and positively impacted forest growth along the western, southeastern and northeastern coasts; (2) shifting climate sensitivities offset positive effects of warming on high-latitude forests, leaving no evidence for continued ‘boreal greening’; and (3) it took a 72% WUE enhancement to compensate for continentally averaged growth declines under RCP 8.5. Our results highlight the importance of locally adapted forest management strategies to handle regional differences in growth responses to climate change.

AAAS.org

Newsweek

There is intense interest in creating artificial photosynthesis as an alternative energy source |

Identification of a gene needed to expand light harvesting in photosynthesis into the far-red-light spectrum provides clues to the development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis, an evolutionary advance that changed the history of life on Earth. “Knowledge of how photosynthesis evolved could empower scientists to design better ways to use light energy for the benefit of humankind,” said Donald A. Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University and the leader of the research team that made the discovery.
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