this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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No trees have a far bigger impact than reducing pollution. They draw moisture out of deep under ground and react with sunlight, evaporating the water which significantly cools the air down. On top of that it also creates shade. Both, combined, have a massive local impact on the climate - it's orders of magnitude more powerful than all the world's carbon emissions (if you are near the tree, anyway).
If you compare the air temperature in a city to surrounding countryside full of trees it is always significantly hotter and drier in the city. That's not pollution, it's a lack of trees.
Trees also directly release trace amounts of "sesquiterpenes" into the air which causes water to condense... in other words trees directly increase the number of clouds and directly increase rainfall. So even though they're pulling water out of the ground they also increase the amount of water in the ground.