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First pub­lished in 2007 by two Russ­ian physi­cists, Vic­tor Gor­shkov and Anas­tas­sia Makarieva, the still little-​known biotic pump the­ory pos­tu­lates that forests are the dri­ving force behind pre­cip­i­ta­tion over land masses. The biotic pump is a mech­a­nism in which nat­ural forests cre­ate and con­trol ocean-​to-​land winds, bring­ing mois­ture to all ter­res­trial life.

It is con­den­sa­tion from forests, and not tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ences, that dri­ves the winds which bring pre­cip­i­ta­tion over land.

As the biotic pump turns mod­ern mete­o­rol­ogy on its head, it has faced stiff resis­tance from some mete­o­rol­o­gists and jour­nals. Like­wise, many new, rad­i­cal the­o­ries in sci­ence aroused resis­tance from ‘old school’ sci­en­tists when it directly chal­lenged long­stand­ing ideas. There­fore, such new the­o­ries take time to be accepted.

Mean­while, it has received lit­tle atten­tion in the pub­lic or pol­icy arena. Yet if Gor­shkov and Makarieva’s the­ory proves cor­rect, loss of for­est, both in tem­per­ate and trop­i­cal regions, will lead to less pre­cip­i­ta­tion over land. This would have mas­sive impli­ca­tions for global pol­icy towards the world’s forests, both trop­i­cal and tem­per­ate. Orig­i­nal post on Mongabay​.com to be found here, includ­ing an in depth inter­view with both Russ­ian physicists.

(Source: Mongabay​.com, 01.02.2012)