Word: warms
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...since you can deliberately plant seeds that are suited to long summers. But in arid parts of the tropics, he says, where plant growth is limited by the availability of water, more frequent droughts could make things worse. "Large parts of the world," says Field, "are already at the warm edge of where things like to grow...
...warm, waterlogged soil of wetlands is prime habitat for the anaerobic microbes that produce methane - and in general, the warmer and wetter, the more the methane. Since rice paddies are kept underwater during the wet growing season in Southeast Asia and other major rice producing areas, paddies too serve as ideal factories for methane. "[The farmers] use controlled floods, and that's guaranteed to produce methane," says Palmer...
...most of that increase was due to wetlands in the temperate regions north or south of the tropics. Moreover, emissions from Arctic wetlands - they do exist - were increasing fastest of all, up more than 30% between 2003 and 2007. That could be due to overall warming. "Most climate models say the surface is going to warm at higher latitude, and this is going to have serious implications for emissions from wetlands," says Palmer...
...Indeed, many scientists worry that we could reach a tipping point at which warming could begin to melt the Arctic permafrost and unleash masses of buried methane - which would then further warm the atmosphere, releasing more methane and continuing in a dangerous feedback cycle. But if we're going to prevent that from happening, we're going to have to find a way other than reducing methane emissions from wetlands. Global food requirements mean that we can't cut back seriously on rice paddy cultivation, and wetlands are far too important to the environment as groundwater filters and buffers against...
...toasty. But the gauge on the rearview mirror warned Story that the outside temperature had dropped to 33°F (0.5°C), just one degree above freezing - and it was only 8:30 p.m. That meant he was in a race to start dozens of irrigation pumps, whose warm water would protect his crop both by insulating the bases of the trees and conducting the moisture up to the fruit and foliage via the roots...