What does the future hold for forests in a warmer, drier world' Over the past 25 years, trees have been dying due to effects of climate change around the world. In Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Europe, drought stress amplified by heat is killing trees that have survived for centuries. Old trees may have grown through entire millennia that were wetter than the past 20 years. We are scientists who study forest dynamics, plant ecology and plant physiology. In a recent study, we found that trees can remember times when water was plentiful and that this memory continues to shape their growth for many years after wet phases end. This research makes us optimistic that young trees of today, which have never known 20th-century rainfall, have not shaped their structure around water abundance and thus may be better equipped to survive in a chronically dry world. This study built on nearly 20 years of forest research in response to early warning signs of forest loss in the...
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