Water Evaporated from Trees Cools Global Climate, Researchers
Find ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2011) — Scientists have long debated
about the impact on global climate of water evaporated from
vegetation. New research from Carnegie's Global Ecology
department concludes that evaporated water helps cool Earth as a
whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating
that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a
cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. These findings,
published Sept. 14 in Environmental Research Letters, have major
implications for land-use decision making. Evaporative cooling
is the process by which a local area is cooled by the energy
used in the evaporation process, energy that would have
otherwise heated the area's surface. It is well known that the
paving over of urban areas and the clearing of forests can
contribute to local warming by decreasing local evaporative
cooling, but it was not understood whether this decreased
evaporation would also contribute to global warming E