April showers are increasingly becoming deluges due to climate change, and May flowers will never be the same. And it's not just April; the warming of the planet is causing a year-round, worldwide trend toward more intense but less frequent rainfalls, a dynamic that will increasingly impact plants worldwide, according to a University of Maryland-led study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Longer dry periods interspersed with stronger downpours tend to benefit plants in dry places like the American West, while plants in wetter locations are burdened by these changes, according to a review by Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Researcher Andrew Feldman and colleagues that analyzed a broad range of previous studies using field experiments, satellite data and model simulations.
These contrasting responses can be attributed to how different plants respond to water, the researchers said. Dry ecosystem plants are more sensitive to large rainfall pulses compared with wet ecosystem plants, and thus benefit from downpours. However, plants within the same ecosystem can vary in how they respond to rainfall, meaning climate change has the potential to shift the plant composition of whole ecosystems.
"Typically, more rainfall over a year will make plants happier and the ecosystem can support more vegetation," said Feldman, the paper's first author. "However, plants can shift their photosynthesis and growth by 10% to 30% if their rainfall input is changed, for example, from three drizzle events per week to one big rainstorm each week—even with the same total rainfall input over a year."
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Categories: Minnesota, Weather