<
https://theconversation.com/in-the-arctic-planting-more-trees-actually-makes-the-world-warmer-244255>
"Across much of the world, planting more trees means more carbon is stored, and
global warming is reduced. That’s the thinking behind recent proposals to plant
more trees in Alaska, Greenland and Iceland.
But we recently published a paper in the journal
Nature Geoscience in which
we argue that tree planting is no climate solution at northern high latitudes.
In fact, it does more harm than good.
If we are to address climate change, it is of course imperative to reduce the
concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, other components
of the Earth system also play important roles in determining if any given
intervention will cause the planet to warm more or less.
One such component is known as “albedo”. It refers to how much solar radiation
is reflected by the surface of our planet back into space. In the northern high
latitudes, snow covers the ground during many months every year. Snow is white,
which makes it reflect about three quarters of the solar energy hitting it when
covering the tundra: it therefore has high albedo.
Trees and tall vegetation protrude from the snow blanket and darken Earth’s
surface, lowering its albedo when covered in snow to average values below 50%
and causing more snow to melt. In the far north, the warming effect of the
lower albedo of trees exceeds the cooling effect of the carbon they take from
the atmosphere by converting CO₂ into biomass. That is, when accounting for
both albedo and the carbon the trees may end up taking out of the atmosphere
and storing, tree planting in the far north actually ends up warming the
climate."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
