Thicker-leaved tropical plants may flourish as CO2 rises, which could be good for climate

“Our work suggests that by shifting which plants are growing in the forest there may be less dire consequences of higher CO2 than other studies have suggested,” Swann said. “There is a lot we still don’t know about how plants are responding to climate change — this work really sets up some best guesses about which plants will grow best in future tropical forests that we can test with more observations.”