Tropical Forests May Be Getting Too Hot for Photosynthesis When trees get too hot, energy production
Tropical Forests May Be Getting Too Hot for Photosynthesis
When trees get too hot, energy production in their leaves breaks down
By Meghan Bartels on August 23, 2023
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tropical-forests-may-be-getting-too-hot-for-photosynthesis/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=earth&utm_content=link&utm_term=2023-08-23_featured-this-week#
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Climate change is already making a small proportion of tropical tree leaves so hot that their photosynthetic machinery bakes and breaks, according to new research.
The study, published on Wednesday in Nature, finds that even when the surrounding air is significantly cooler than the leaves themselves, some 0.01 percent of individual leaves can reach a critical temperature at which the enzymes required for photosynthesis go through a process called denaturation—the same type of irreversible change that egg proteins in cake batter undergo in the oven. “It’s put some really hard numbers to what we already know intuitively: that it is getting too hot for trees and for tropical forests,” says Stephanie Pau, a global change ecologist at Florida State University, who was not involved in the new research.
Although only a small proportion of leaves are currently reaching this feverlike state, study co-author Christopher Doughty, an earth systems scientist at Northern Arizona University, says the findings are still starker than he’d expected. “It’s pretty rare that these leaves will get that hot right now,” he says. “But it was actually surprising that any of them got to that point because it’s quite a bit above air temperature.”
Another reason for concern, Pau says, is that tropical forests are crucial for carbon storage and biodiversity—and they’re already plenty threatened by deforestation. If enough leaves on a tree die, so will the tree itself, which means rising temperatures could chip away at these forests.
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