Wind does more than sway trees. It also plays an important role in determining an ecosystem’s water-use efficiency—defined as the amount of carbon an ecosystem absorbs per unit of water lost. Water-use efficiency is an important measure of how ecosystems balance growth and water availability.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis while losing water through their leaves. In addition, ecosystems lose water through evaporation from soil and other surfaces. Understanding the balance between carbon absorption and water loss is essential for predicting how ecosystems respond to climate change.
Now, a research team led by Prof. FU Zheng at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed a previously overlooked role for wind in regulating ecosystem water-use efficiency.
The findings were published in Nature Climate Change on October 15.
In the new study, the researchers analyzed observations from monitoring sites worldwide, covering forests, grasslands, croplands, and other ecosystems. Even after accounting for temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, atmospheric dryness, and carbon dioxide concentration, they found that stronger winds were associated with lower water-use efficiency at nearly 80% of the sites.
Across these sites, water-use efficiency showed a stronger median standardized response to wind speed than to the other environmental factors examined, highlighting the previously underappreciated importance of wind.
But why does wind have such an effect?
Much like a breeze speeding up the drying of wet clothes, stronger winds remove moist air from around vegetation, allowing water to escape more easily into the atmosphere.
The researchers found that declining water-use efficiency was driven mainly by increased evapotranspiration—water loss through evaporation and plant transpiration—with reduced carbon uptake through photosynthesis playing a smaller role. Evergreen needleleaf forests and ecosystems in humid regions were particularly sensitive to changes in wind speed.
Using Earth system models, the team further found that future changes in wind speed could substantially influence ecosystem water-use efficiency, although the magnitude of this effect would vary across climate scenarios.
According to the researchers, these findings highlight wind speed as an important yet often overlooked factor in the global carbon and water cycles. As wind patterns continue to change, accounting more fully for their effects on ecosystem carbon uptake and water loss could improve Earth system model predictions of terrestrial ecosystem responses to future climate change.
Nature Climate Change
High wind speed reduces water use efficiency across terrestrial ecosystems
15-Oct-2026