Speaker: Dr. Abigail Swann (University of Washington)

Abstract:

The demand for water by the atmosphere is widely predicted to increase due to climate change.  It is commonly assumed that this will lead to more widespread and severe droughts.  Many recent studies, however, ignore the impact of rising atmospheric CO2 on plant water use. In this talk I will separate the influence of climate and plant physiological responses to CO2 for metrics of future drought stress in experiments conducted with Earth system models. My analysis shows that physiological and radiative contributions to widely-used drought metrics are highly variable and helps to reconcile recent diverging reports of changing drought stress.