Water as a Cooling Force: The Missing Climate Lever?

Water as a Cooling Force: The Missing Climate Lever?

A cross-sector conversation for climate professionals and advocates in Perth

For decades, climate mitigation has centred on carbon.

But what if we’ve been overlooking a critical regulator of planetary temperature?

While in Perth for the Australian Water Association conference, two visiting experts, Dr Katie Ross and Cynthia Mitchell AO, will host an open conversation on an emerging and urgent field of climate science: the bio-hydrological role of water in regulating heat.

Despite the obvious links, ecology and climate science have largely operated in parallel. Only recently has transdisciplinary research in soil-landscape-atmosphere systems begun to articulate what healthy ecosystems actually do for climate (and it's much more than carbon sequestration).

Historically, deeply rooted perennial vegetation and phytoplankton drove vast amounts of transpiration and photosynthesis. In the process, organic compounds and microbial particles were carried upward with water vapour, acting as cloud condensation nuclei. At the same time, water moved much more slowly through the landscape, meaning more water infiltrating into the ground for use during drier times, more water available for the biosphere, more evaporation, more transpiration, more blue water (freshwater stored in water bodies) and more green water (water in process through the soil and plant life).

The result?

• Greater formation of low, reflective clouds

• Higher albedo

• Frequent local rainfall recycling

• Surface heat removal through evapo-transpiration

In short: living water systems helped stabilise climate.

As landscapes have been cleared, soils degraded, rivers straightened and oceans stressed, we have reduced nature’s capacity to connect earth and sky through biologically mediated water cycles. Declining cloud cover and reduced albedo are now being linked to the unexpected temperature extremes of the past few years.

The implications are significant: If water cycles are climate drivers, then restoring them may be one of the most under-leveraged climate interventions available.

This session will explore:

• The scientific foundations of bio-hydrological cooling

• How ecosystem degradation alters atmospheric dynamics

• The limits of a carbon-only framing

• What restoring local water cycles could mean for drought, flood, fire and heat in WA

• Practical implications for land management, policy and climate strategy

This is an invitation to interrogate assumptions.

We are intentionally widening the audience beyond the water sector to include climate scientists, policymakers, regenerative agriculture practitioners, planners, funders and systems thinkers.

If your work touches climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience or landscape restoration, this conversation may challenge and expand your framework.

Format

Approximately 30min presentation followed by QnA and plenty of time for discussion about applications and implications

Refreshments

Drinks and woodfired pizza are available to purchase at the venue