What is photosynthesis and how does it relate to climate change?

As any Montessori student will tell you, photosynthesis or the “leaf factory” is one of the first lessons that you get as an elementary student. Photosynthesis is how plants ‘make’ their own food. The sun acts as the plants’ heat source as it moves water up from the leaves, and absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. As temperatures continues to rise, plants and leaves and how they respond to that ‘heat’ changes…. It’s like someone turning up the temperature on an oven. Plants in rainforests and sensitive climates won’t be able to survive,  and other plants could die off completely which will of course change our oxygen and the air that we are lucky enough to breathe. - Aidan

Photosynthesis is when plants take in carbon dioxide through the pores on the underside of the leaf and go through a somewhat complicated process using sunlight to turn all of the carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen. This relates to climate change because we currently have too much carbon in the air, which is causing the earth to heat up and causing other things like changes in the water cycle. So it relates, because ideally if we don’t cut and burn down our forests we wouldn’t be running into as much of a problem, because the photosynthesis happening in the forests would remove the excess carbon from the air. Also if we didn’t have gas-powered cars or any transportation or heating and cooling that relied on gas or coal or oils or anything like that, we wouldn’t be running into this problem either. - Piper

Photosynthesis is the process of making sugar, glucose, and the thing we breath, what’s it called? Oh yeah, sweet, sweet oxygen. It relates to climate change in a couple of ways. One of the main reasons it is related is because the plant takes in CO2, and what is polluting the air? CO2. Of course we need some CO2, but to this extreme is not good. Plants are taking in a gas, and producing a solid, sugar, which takes the gas out of the atmosphere. - Emily

Photosynthesis is the process in which plants create their own food by taking water, CO2, and sunlight and putting them through 2 complicated systems and the final product is glucose, a sugar that the plants use as food. This affects climate change because it is one of the ways that carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere. And because all of the logging that is happening, less and less plants can complete photosynthesis and therefore less carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere. - Owen

Photosynthesis uses carbon during its process, and so plants remove and contain carbon from the air. Plants are very important in fighting climate change but they are also one of the causes. Plants store a lot of carbon, and so when they die they are covered by soil and the carbon is added to the soil as organic matter. When farmers till land they speed up the decomposition of the organic matter in the soil and release that carbon into the environment, adding to global warming in massive ways. - Josh

Photosynthesis is where plants take water, carbon dioxide, and light energy and split the water into hydrogen and oxygen then release some oxygen into the atmosphere and combine the hydrogen, carbon, and remaining oxygen to make glucose, starch, and cellulose. When the plants die, it returns the carbon into the soil. This helps slow climate change because it removes the carbon from the atmosphere and puts it into the soil where it's stored and does not damage the atmosphere. - CJ

Photosynthesis is the process when plants use sunlight and carbon dioxide to create glucose (their food).  It relates to climate change because it uses carbon dioxide which takes the carbon out of the atmosphere. - Alan

_{Photosynthesis is the process in which plants make food. Plants make food by taking in CO2 and taking the carbon out of the molecule and leaving it with O2, which the plant then puts back out into the atmosphere. Then, in the chloroplast it uses sunlight to take the carbon and combine it with water to make a sugary substance called glucose.  - Hudson} 

Photosynthesis is a process used by plants to convert light energy from the sun into chemical energy in the form of glucose that can fuel organisms' activity. Photosynthesis reduces the effects of global warming because it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Global warming are the results of gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbing and trapping radiation, increasing the global temperature. - Henry

Photosynthesis is when plants absorb water, CO2, nutrients, and energy from the sun and make glucose out of the carbon atoms in the carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis takes in CO2 and expels the oxygen in the form of O2. Photosynthesis is a major key in fighting climate change, the plants pull the carbon back into the earth and make the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere go down majorly. - Ryan

Photosynthesis is the process in which plants or other organisms use the light from the sun to make foods from carbon dioxide and water. - Leo