Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds April 26, 2016 From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25. An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.
This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015.
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Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni
Green leaves use energy from sunlight through photosynthesis to chemically combine carbon dioxide drawn in from the air with water and nutrients tapped from the ground to produce sugars, which are the main source of food, fiber and fuel for life on Earth. Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth. However, carbon dioxide fertilization isn’t the only cause of increased plant growth—nitrogen, land cover change and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight changes all contribute to the greening effect. To determine the extent of carbon dioxide’s contribution, researchers ran the data for carbon dioxide and each of the other variables in isolation through several computer models that mimic the plant growth observed in the satellite data. Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.” .com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XI" target="_blank">Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This video is public domain and can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio.
About 85 percent of Earth’s ice-free lands is covered by vegetation. The area covered by all the green leaves on Earth is equal to, on average, 32 percent of Earth’s total surface area - oceans, lands and permanent ice sheets combined. The extent of the greening over the past 35 years “has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” said lead author Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first half of this study with Myneni as a visiting scholar at Boston University.
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Every year, about half of the 10 billion tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere from human activities remains temporarily stored, in about equal parts, in the oceans and plants. “While our study did not address the connection between greening and carbon storage in plants, other studies have reported an increasing carbon sink on land since the 1980s, which is entirely consistent with the idea of a greening Earth,” said co-author Shilong Piao of the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University. While rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the air can be beneficial for plants, it is also the chief culprit of climate change. The gas, which traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere, has been increasing since the industrial age due to the burning of oil, gas, coal and wood for energy and is continuing to reach concentrations not seen in at least 500,000 years. The impacts of climate change include global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice as well as more severe weather events. The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.” “While the detection of greening is based on data, the attribution to various drivers is based on models,” said co-author Josep Canadell of the Oceans and Atmosphere Division in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia. Canadell added that while the models represent the best possible simulation of Earth system components, they are continually being improved. Read the paper at Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3004.ht ml
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By Samson Reiny
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-‐dioxide-‐fertilization-‐ greening-‐earth
Forest growth accelerating in B.C. due to carbon dioxide 'fertilizer effect' RANDY SHORE More from Randy Shore Published on: April 11, 2016 | Last Updated: April 20, 2016 7:14 PM PDT
Pine trees dMARK YUEN/VANCOUVER SUN / VANCOUVER SUN
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Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the
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atmosphere are accelerating the growth of B.C.’s forests by one to three per cent a year, enough to cancel out the impact on the climate from the mountain pine beetle outbreak by 2020, according to a new study from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. “This turnaround will happen much sooner than we had imagined,” said lead author and Environment Canada climate scientist Vivek Arora. The pine beetle infestation, which killed countless trees over 18 million hectares, had a double impact — dramatically reducing the ability of western Canadian forests to store carbon, and worse, releasing massive quantities of carbon as dead stands of pine rotted or burned. The combined effect turned B.C. forests from a carbon sink (a reservoir) into a carbon source during the peak years of the outbreak between 2009 to 2011, said co-author Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service. Computer models estimate that B.C. forests stored 328 million tonnes less carbon due to the beetle outbreak, which began in 1999. However, the effects of global warming — rising temperatures, higher rainfall, and an atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide — have created a “fertilization effect” which has accelerated the growth of trees, especially in the high-latitude forests that cover much of Canada, Russia and Europe. Relatively cool temperatures in Canadian forests typically limit tree growth and carbon uptake to less than half the rate seen in tropical latitudes. But that is beginning to change. New research suggests that climate change has increased the rate of growth and carbon storage in our forests, so much so that an additional around 1000 million tonnes of carbon will be stored by our trees between the pine beetle outbreak and 2020. “We have transitioned from a period at the peak of the mountain pine beetle outbreak, when the forests were a carbon source, to now, where they have become a sink (again),” said Kurz. About half of all greenhouse gas emissions are absorbed by plants on land and in the ocean, but that hasn’t been enough to keep pace with the amount of CO2 being released by human sources. “Climate changes naturally over the long term, but over the past 150 years we have seen a rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other
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greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that has been much more rapid than at any time in the past 600,000 years,” said Arora. Cooler temperatures limit the ability of high-latitude forests to grow, which has placed a natural cap on the amount of CO2 they can absorb and store. Until recently. “In B.C., the scientific evidence is that our forests are growing faster than in the past due to a warming climate,” said Arora. “This is helping us recover from the carbon impact of the mountain pine beetle outbreak sooner than we imagined.” Arora’s computer model reflects real-world growth rate data collected by the Canadian Forestry Service between 1958 and 1990, then extrapolates the trend line. “When we run the model forward, it suggests that if the trees keep growing at this rate then we will more than compensate for the losses associated with the pine beetle,” he said. http://vancouversun.com/news/local-‐news/forest-‐growth-‐accelerating-‐in-‐b-‐c-‐due-‐ to-‐carbon-‐dioxide-‐fertilizer-‐effect
CO2 myth busted: Why we need more carbon dioxide to grow food and forests
Sunday, March 31, 2013 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: carbon dioxide, myths, plant nutrition http://www.naturalnews.com/039720_carbon_dioxide_myths_plant_nutrition.html
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(NaturalNews) If you talk to the global warming crowd, carbon dioxide -- CO2 -- is the enemy of mankind. Any and all creation of CO2 is bad for the planet, we're told, and its production must be strictly limited in order to save the world. But what if that wasn't true? What if CO2 were actually a planet-saving nutrient that could multiply food production rates and feed the world more nutritious, healthy plants?
CO2 is a vital nutrient for food crops As it turns out, CO2 is desperately needed by food crops, and right now there is a severe shortage of CO2 on the planet compared to what would be optimum for plants. Greenhouse operators are actually buying carbon dioxide and injecting it into their greenhouses in order to maximize plant growth.
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The science on this is irrefutable. As just one example, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food says: CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient. If you want to understand why CO2 is an essential nutrient for food crop growth, check out this informative slide show. It explains that "CO2 may be repidly depleted during crop production" daylight hours, because the plants pull all the CO2 out of the air and use it in photosynthesis. The CO2 found in modern-day atmosphere is 340ppm. But food crops would grow far faster if the concentration of CO2 were closer to 1000ppm, or roughly 300% higher than current levels. In fact, most greenhouse plant production causes a "CO2 depletion" to happen, shutting down photosynthesis and limiting food production. As the "Carbon Dioxide in Greenhouses" fact sheet explains: Ambient CO2 level in outside air is about 340 ppm by volume. All plants grow well at this level but as CO2 levels are raised by 1,000 ppm photosynthesis increases proportionately resulting in more sugars and carbohydrates available for plant growth. Any actively growing crop in a tightly clad greenhouse with little or no ventilation can readily reduce the CO2 level during the day to as low as 200 ppm. Thus, greenhouse plants are "running out" of CO2. They are starving for it. And when you add it to food crops, you get higher yields, improved taste, shorter flowering times, enhanced pest resistance and other benefits.
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Why we should pump carbon dioxide into greenhouses This brings up an obvious answer for what to do with all the CO2 produced by power plants, office buildings and even fitness centers where people exhale vast quantities of CO2. The answer is to build adjacent greenhouses and pump the CO2 into the greenhouses. Every coal-fired power plant, in other words, should have a vast array of greenhouses surrounding it. Most of what you see emitted from power plant smokestacks is water vapor and CO2, both essential nutrients for rapid growth of food crops. By diverting carbon dioxide and water into greenhouses, the problem of emissions is instantly solved because the plants update the CO2 and use it for photosynthesis, thus "sequestering" the CO2 while rapidly growing food crops. It also happens to produce oxygen as a "waste product" which can be released into the atmosphere, (slightly) upping the oxygen level of the air we breathe. This is a brilliant solution because humans want to live on a world with low CO2 that supports frozen ice caps in order to keep ocean water levels low, but they want to eat a volume of food that requires high CO2 for production. The answer is to concentrate CO2 into greenhouses where food production is multiplied by CO2 nutrition. I'll bet you've never heard Al Gore talk about CO2 as "nutrition." He declares it a pollutant and wants to tax you for producing it. But CO2 is actually a key nutritive gas for food crops. Without carbon dioxide, we would all have starved to death by now.
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Shutting down power plants to destroy America's power infrastructure The U.S. government's solution to power plant emissions, however, is to just shut down coal-fired power plants, causing rolling blackouts across the USA, especially during hot summer days. The EPA has forced hundreds of power plants to shut down across the USA, achieving a loss of power infrastructure that vastly exceeds what would even be possible by an enemy invasion of high-altitude warplanes dropping bombs. The EPA, under the excuse of "saving the planet," is destroying America's power infrastructure and leading our nation into a third-world scenario where power availability is dicey and unsustained. It seems to be just one part of the overall plan to gut America's economy, offshore millions of jobs, put everybody on welfare and destroy small businesses. But what if we harnessed coal-fired power plants instead of shutting them down? What if we used them as "CO2 generators" that fed CO2 into vast greenhouse operations that produced organic, high-growth foods that could feed the nation? Coal-fired power plants can produce both electricity and food nutrition at the same time. Better yet, if you combine this concept with aquaponics, you get simultaneous production of plants and fish while using no soil, no GMOs and one-tenth the water of conventional agriculture.
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See, the solutions to all our problems already exist. The only reason we are suffering as a nation is because political puppets try to brainwash us into believing complete falsehoods like, "carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant" or "the people don't need healthy foods; they need medications and vaccines." When societies believe falsehoods, they crumble and collapse. That's where America is headed, of course. And it's all being accelerated by deceptive bureaucrats who want to convince you that growing real food is bad and we should all be punished for exhaling carbon dioxide, an essential nutrient for food crops. Carbon dioxide is not the enemy it's been made out to be. It's actually plant nutrition that helps regrow rainforests, food crops and wetlands. In fact, higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would make the planet more lush and abundant in terms of plant life, forests, trees and food crops. --------------------------------------
COMMENTS
James Matkin • 2 days ago
Excellent idea. Pumping CO2 captured from coal-fired power plants into greenhouses is brilliant. The result is a clear win-win by enhancing food production worldwide and making coal power plants much more attractive. In this debate the fact atmospheric carbon dioxide is essential to life through photosynthesis should cause us to pause before rushing to eliminate it from the sky. On a global scale, photosynthesis is the most important process on Earth and CO2 is essential to the process. It is responsible for the presence of oxygen in our
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atmosphere. Each year, photosynthesis synthesizes 160 billion metric tons of carbohydrate.
Photosynthesis shuts down when atmospheric CO2 concentrations fall below 150 ppm and 200 ppm. We need more not less CO2. Unusual human-caused global warming is an unproven theory not conforming to reality. View Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore's excellent presentation to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London Oct 2015 http://www.dailywire.com/news/...
Fear mongering has been the modus operandi of climate alarmists who ignore the basic facts. To blame a trace gas that makes up .036% of the atmosphere, CO2, and is one and one-half times heavier than air for what the earth's climate does is FOOLHARDY. At 392 parts per million, CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere-- less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present.One drop in the fuel tank of a mid-sized car. Compared to former geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished. Let's integrate coal power energy with greenhouses and aquaponics.
Randal Colling • 2 months ago
Co2 during the Jurassic age was aprox 2000 PPM where as today it is just over 400 PPM....Where is the "problem"?
Luigi • 6 months ago
How to control everything: Say CO2 is
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going to end the world and kill everyone, reduce all CO2 emissions as possible, crops start to fail due to lack of CO2, Monsanto shows up with "world saving" GMOs. Good move, governments.
whocares • a year ago
Out of curiousity. Why isn't anyone attacking water vapor as a greenhouse gas? The IPCC doesn't even list it as a greenhouse gas. It retains heat more than co2 yet causes cooler temperatures when it condenses. Is it possible that alternative energies like hydrogen and nuclear (since they emit water vapor) are the cause of the recent climate changes? Or is that just blasphemy? Before jumping on either bandwagon ready to spew forth the rhetoric of your favored side, try researching ALL data (even things neither side talks about). You'll see both sides of the debate are severally flawed. Fossil fuels are a pollutant, nuclear is a long term disaster, solar and wind have environmental impacts as well. We shouldn't settle for the lesser of the evils.
Lewis whocares • 10 months ago
Water vapour does act as more of a green house gas but it's part of the water cycle. In other words, the water vapour condenses into rain just as it usually would. The CO2 we release is not part of the current natural balance, it's CO2 that hasn't been part of the cycle for millions of years, it's been locked away underground. Think of the water vapour like CO2 from biofuels, with biofuels, the only CO2 being released is part of the current cycle as the plant extracted the CO2 from the atmosphere and we are now releasing it again. It's a similar concept.
If we only used water from underground that has been trapped there, however, then we may have a problem. That won't happen, though, that's unnecessarily expensive! Unless we
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have droughts...
WilsonOsmo • 2 years ago
This is one of the fake sites set up by some conservative organizations like the Heritage Institute and the fossil fuel industry as part of their disinformation campaign. This "Mike Adams" is a paid fraudster and a charlatan. It's working for them, they've convinced large segments of the public that nothing will happen and humanity can continue to add unlimited amounts of heat trapping CO2 into the atmosphere with impunity, contradictory to what 97% of the worlds' climate scientists say. I grieve for our poor descendants and all the myriad of species that will be destroyed forever. The greedy and stupid people have won, humans are now on a worst case trajectory to oblivion and will take everything else down with them over the next 150 years. Ghastly.
James Matkin WilsonOsmo • a day ago
Personal attacks on Mike Adams are disrespectful and they are not arguments. Sadly you fall into the camp of many climate alarmists who fail and fear debating the issue of AGW on its merits. In desperation you avoid the facts with personal insults.
Here are the facts about consensus. There is no 97% consensus of climate scientists that humans are causing increased global warming of such negative severity as to constitute a crisis demanding concerted action. Of course human industry adds heat, but only very small amounts when compared with the sun and other heat forcing variables. To prove the lack of consensus 31,000 academics, including 9,000 with PhDs, claim that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are actually beneficial for the environment.
The petition was created in 1998 by an American physicist, the late Frederick Seitz, in response to the Kyoto Protocol a year earlier.
It urged
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the US government to reject the treaty and said: "The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind."
It added: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of ... greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments."
The petition was reissued last year by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, an independent research group, partly in response to Al Gore’s film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.
Its president, Arthur Robinson, said: "If this many American scientists will sign this petition, you certainly can’t continue to contend that there is a consensus on this subject."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
AGW is like the Y2K scare of chicken little fear mongering. It will evaporate with the continuing evidence from reality that there is nothing to fear and much to gain with more CO2.
1digger WilsonOsmo • a month ago
A fool and their money are soon parted. Well you fit the part to a 'T'; all one has to do is follow the money to see the real charlatan's and fraudsters when one sees who's behind the curtain of the 'global warming, cooling, change or whatever crowd' that want to control the masses by controlling the resources with rules, regulations, taxation and FEAR that the sky is falling.
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Stop being a puppet of the liberal elite's and THINK for a change; now that would be a novel idea for low information liberal lemmings.
Steven Neal WilsonOsmo • 6 months ago
All of the Climate Science community know that if they spout anything but the current beliefs coming out in "Government Paid Studies", KNOW that if they say anything contrary to the "party line" their funding, their future chances of work, and their families will be destroyed. Time Magazine in 1979 cover story "the coming Ice Age". Science is supposed to be impartial, when in the past "have all of any groups of scientists been in total agreement without any dissenting opinions??" Consider that before you spout the same opinion held by the majority of science. No I'm not a scientist just a man who is capable of "CRITICAL THINKING", asking the who, what, when, where, and why of any one of a myriad of subjects, and getting my own answers whether it is the current train of thought, or perhaps a dissenting opinion.
−
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WereGoat WilsonOsmo • 6 months ago
So how much were the 'climate scientists' paid?
Luigi WilsonOsmo • 6 months ago
97% of people agreeing on something feels more like religion than science. Good science is based on people trying to refute what is believed to be true. If everyone agrees then there is no research and if people agree with something that is wrong they may never find it out and do WAY more harm than good...
sbleve Luigi • 4 months ago
Science and consensus have nothing in common. Zero. Consensus is the primary attraction within a religion. AFTER REVIEWING MY PAPER DR. RICHARD C. WILLSON ACCLAIMED CLIMATE SCIENTIST AUTHOR OF 56 PEER REVIEWED CLIMATE RESEARCH PAPERS WROTE –
Richard C Willson 1 hr ago
The CO2 anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) hypothesis has not withstood the test of time. CAGW is based on predictions of the flawed, 1980's vintage global circulation models that have failed to match observational data both since and prior to their fabrication. Climate changes continually and is determined by natural forces that humans have no significant control over.
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Increased plant growth in CO2 enhanced environments is a demonstrated fact. Since CO2 is not a significant GHG for climate there is no reason not to use it. Instead of wasting resources on crony capitalist and environmental extremist 'green' energy projects we should use fossil fuels, the most cost-effective form of energy, to the maximum extent possible. Using the CO2 byproduct in an intelligent way will be a contribution to taking the most intelligent possible path into the future. RICHARD C. WILLSON RESUME Education: B.S., Engineering Physics, University of Colorado (1960) M.S., Physics and Astrophysics, University of Colorado (1963) Ph.C. Atmospheric Physics, University of California at Los Angeles (1971) Ph.D. Atmospheric Physics, University of California at Los Angeles (1975) Honors: NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1981) UCLA: Honorary Graduate Scholastic Fraternity Committee Assignments: Member of the Working Group on Solar Influences on Global Change, Committee on Global Change, National Research Council (1990 - 1994) Member of the Science Steering Committee for the NASA Earth Science Geostationary Platform (1988 - 1994) Presenter to the Committee on Earth Studies working group on long term satellite measurements, National Research Council (Sept., 1997) Member, International Advisory Committee for Absolute Radiomtery (1988 - present) Member of NASA validation review panel for the EOS/SORCE experiments (2000). Presenter to the NOAA Panel on Strategies for Climate (Nov., 2000.
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Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039720_carbon_dioxide_myths_plant_nutrition.html #ixzz4GgYloP6K http://www.naturalnews.com/039720_carbon_dioxide_myths_plant_nutrition.html
NASA: Rising CO2 Will Help Food Crops Posted on May 4, 2016 by admin http://acsh.org/news/2016/05/04/nasa-rising-co2-will-help-food-crops/
A new paper in Nature Climate Change affirms what you may have learned in an early biology class. Since carbon dioxide (CO2) is necessary for plants to engage in photosynthesis, a boost will rev up the engines a little. If you have looked at the edges of deserts decades ago versus now, you can see what has happened as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere rose; water-use efficiency in plants went up and
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things got more green. That is because higher CO2 levels reduce the amount of water crops lose. Leaves contain tiny pores called stomata that open and collect carbon dioxide molecules for photosynthesis, a process known as transpiration. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the pores don’t open as wide, resulting in lower levels of transpiration by plants and therefore increased water-use efficiency. Those may be also be one of the reasons why wheat, maize, soybean and rice crops are doing better than ever. By simulating changes in crop yield and evapotranspiration (the combined transfer of water vapor to the atmosphere due to evaporation and transpiration) the researchers in the new paper were able to calculate the amount of yield produced per unit of water, a common measurement for assessing crop water-use efficiency. With 30 simulations of six global crop models, driven by climate data from five different global climate models where concentrations of carbon dioxide double by the year 2080 compared with 2000, they found that crops responded better with double the CO2 than with year 2000 CO2 levels and higher temperatures. For wheat and soybean crops, in terms of yield the median estimated negative impacts of yield losses due to more warming were fully compensated, and rice crops recouped up to 90 percent while maize recouped up to 60 percent of their losses. The study offers some hope for crops grown in arid, often economically challenged areas, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, in the NASA press release. “For example, farmers may switch to crops where their improved photosynthesis and more efficient water use more than offsets losses due to the high temperatures that climate change will bring.” Let’s not get crazy, though. It’s the dose that makes the poison. It is well-known that something in moderation can be bad in excess. If you want to believe Joe Mercola about acupuncture, for example, that is fine, but if you believe him about everything you will die. And too much CO2 is bad for us. How much is too much? Well, submarine captains want to keep things at under 5,000 parts per million (ppm). They think about that because they are in a small pressurized tube under the ocean and human breath exhalation is 40,000 ppm.
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What is the atmospheric CO2 level right now? 400 ppm. And in a thriving cornfield during the day, it drops to 200 ppm because plants absorb it to generate energy. So we have some room to breathe as we continue to switch to cleaner energy sources like natural gas and nuclear and, in the future, solar, and perhaps even hydrogen. Citation: Delphine Deryng, Joshua Elliott, Christian Folberth, Christoph Müller, Thomas A. M. Pugh, Kenneth J. Boote, Declan Conway, Alex C. Ruane, Dieter Gerten, James W. Jones, Nikolay Khabarov, Stefan Olin, Sibyll Schaphoff, Erwin Schmid, Hong Yang & Cynthia Rosenzweig, ‘Regional disparities in the beneficial effects of rising CO2 concentrations on crop water productivity’, Nature Climate Change April 18 2016 doi:10.1038/nclimate2995
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Interacting length scales in the reactiveinfiltration instability Volume 40, Issue 12 28 June 2013 Pages 3031–3035
Regular Article
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Impact of CO2 fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments Authors Randall J. Donohue,
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Corresponding author CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Corresponding author: R. J. Donohue, CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1666, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. (
[email protected]) Search for more papers by this author
Michael L.
Roderick,
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Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Search for more papers by this author
Tim R. McVicar,
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CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, ACT, Australia Search for more papers by this author
Graham D.
Farquhar
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Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia Search for more papers by this author
First published: 19 June 2013Full publication history DOI: 10.1002/grl.50563View/save citation Cited by: 59 articles
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Abstract [1] Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due
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to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.
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