News
Recent news stories from research, education, and the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich.
Winter precipitation is the major source of tree transpiration in summer
Interception and evaporation limit the amount of summer precipitation reaching forest soils. As a result, beech and spruce trees are dominantly transpiring precipitation originating from the winter half of the year. Sufficient soil water storage is key during extended summer dry periods.
Substantial global cost of climate inaction
Pioneering study reveals that limiting global warming to 1.5ºC could reduce the global economic costs of climate change by two thirds. If warming continues to 3ºC, global GDP will decrease by up to 10 percent - with the worst impacts in less developed countries.
More projected warming in Europe due to neglected regional aerosol changes
Greenhouse gas emissions have led to substantial warming globally and in Europe. However, the observed warming in Europe is stronger than typically projected in regional climate models. A new study shows that this is due to insufficient consideration of changes in aerosols in the models and implies higher warming than expected for the future.
Coadaptation of coexisting plants enhances productivity in an agricultural system
Organisms exposed to consistent interactions across generations often coevolve to optimize their coexistence. This occurs between plants and pollinators or hosts and parasites. However, it is not known if plants coexisting over multiple generations in a community evolve to avoid competition and boost individual fitness. A study conducted by Anja Schmutz and Christian Schöb at the Agricultural Ecology group at ETH Zurich tackles this question.