People around the world are adorning homes and businesses with festive holiday decor, which typically means an abundance of Christmas trees are on display. In the U.S., they pop up everywhere from the average living room to the Rockefeller Center plaza in Manhattan and the White House in Washington, D.C. But climate change threatens to complicate the tradition. Christmas trees, like any other crop, are affected by the general rise in temperature associated with global warming and the extreme weather events that result from it. “The Earth’s climate is changing to a warmer one. And like most of society and the environment, Christmas trees are not adapting fast enough to these changes,” according to the National Centers for Environmental Information website . Higher temperatures have led to warmer winters and longer growing seasons, which contribute to the prevalence of pests and disease that damage the trees usually decorated for Christmas. Heavier rain and oversaturated soil also put the trees at risk of contracting a notorious type of fungus-like organism that attacks them at the root, weakening and killing them quickly. How severe weather could impact Christmas trees 02:09 Extreme heat and prolonged drought make Christmas trees more vulnerable to those problems and a host of others, including browning needles and stunted development. Unusual heat alone can cause trees to die prematurely. In Oregon, where more than a third of country’s Christmas trees are grown, researchers at Oregon State University reported that record heat in the summer of 2021 destroyed roughly 70% of the Christmas tree seedlings planted that year and dried out the needles of more mature crops. Fewer viable trees could mean higher prices for consumers, although experts have largely attributed the steadily rising cost of Christmas trees in recent decades to a supply shortage that dates back […]