Alarmists Red-Faced As Satellite Image Analyses Show Globe Has Greened Markedly Over Past 4 Decades

German climate science skeptic Michael Kruger of Science Skeptical here writes that the earth has become GREENER and more fertile due to more CO2 and warming.

Source: Zhu et al

Hard to believe, but the earth is not turning into a desert and more arid due to the CO2 increase in the atmosphere, like alarmist scientists and media like us to believe it is, but rather it is becoming greener and more fertile.

This is what scientists have found through the analysis of satellite data over the last four decades.

A study published in 2016 in Nature Climate Change proves that the earth has become considerably greener over the past decades.

For their study, the researchers led by Zaichun Zhu evaluated vegetation data recorded by three satellites between 1982 and 2009. The evaluation showed that since 1982, the plant world has become more luxuriant and thus greener on a large part of terrestrial land surfaces.

Area “twice the size of the USA”

“The biggest greening trends can be seen in the southeast of North America, in the northern Amazon region, in Europe, Central Africa and Southeast Asia,” said Zhu and his colleagues.  “This greening, which we have observed, is comparable in scale to an additional green continent twice the size of the USA,” says Zhu.

To find out exactly what is responsible for this increase in plant material, the scientists fed ten global ecosystem models with data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use and the development of climate factors such as temperature and precipitation. The result: 70% of the earth’s greening is due to the fertilizing effect of rising CO2 levels and 30% to climatic effects and other effects such as climate change, nitrogen deposition and changes in land cover.

Thus, in the high latitudes and in Tibet and other highlands of the mountains, the rise in temperatures is responsible for the fact that the vegetation there became more luxuriant. “Warming promotes photosynthesis and prolongs the growing season,” the researchers explain.

Increasing precipitation in the Sahel and South Africa

In the Sahel and South Africa, on the other hand, increasing precipitation is becoming noticeable. This makes the region more fertile and greener.

The rise in CO2 emissions and climate change therefore favor the greening of the earth and plant growth. Even Syria has greened.

The earth has become greener over the past 4 decades. This is the main conclusion of an international study published in Nature Climate Change on 25 April 2016. In 40 percent of the world’s regions, a significant increase in leaf biomass was observed between 1982 and 2015, only 4 percent showed significant losses of vegetation. The vegetation corresponds to the size of a continent twice the size of the USA.

The desert regions have also become greener, such as the Sahel on the border with the Sahara, the Fertile Crescent, which stretches across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, and the former region of Carthage in North Africa, which used to be the granary of Ancient Rome.

These areas were already green and fertile in the climate optimum of the Holocene directly after the last ice age. From there, in the course of the Neolithic revolution, agriculture spread to Europe and Northern Europe.

data6-africa-veg

The Sahel region has been greening for four decades:

This has been shown by a variety of studies.

Sahara shrinks by over 700,000 sq. km.

In 2018, Venter et al. recorded an eight percent increase in timber vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa over the last three decades using satellite imagery.

According to Wikipedia, the Sahara covers an area of around 9.2 million square kilometers. Eight percent of this corresponds to more than 700,000 square kilometers. This is an area almost as large as Germany and France together!

Lake Chad is growing

Even Lake Chad at the south edge of the Sahara is growing again and getting greener.

A greener Europe

Also in Germany it has not become more arid over the last four decades, as the media and climate impact researchers have recently informed us. Quite to the contrary:

Deutschland-Gruen

Above all the north, the east, the low mountain regions and the Alps have become greener, as the satellite data show. The forest area is also growing in Germany, which is over 30% wooded. Between 1992 and 2008, the forest area in Germany “grew by an average of 176 square kilometers per year”.

20 responses to “Alarmists Red-Faced As Satellite Image Analyses Show Globe Has Greened Markedly Over Past 4 Decades”

  1. Shoki Kaneda

    The precious, life-giving, beneficial trace gas, CO2; we need at least 800 ppm.

  2. John

    Why no images?

    1. Jeff Hagerman

      You haven’t seen a red-faced person before?

  3. Alarmists Red-Faced As Satellite Image Analyses Show Globe Has Greened Markedly Over Past 4 Decades – Truth is difficult but essential…
  4. Varun

    If you have used NDVI to check how green the vegetation have become, then this study is not updated. Please mention how you understand the greenness of the vegetation from a satellite image

  5. Narasappa Hosamani

    Really this is a good sign, but why there is uncertainity in the weather across globe,there are consecutive droughts in certain areas like midsouthern area and there are more floods in certain areas especially in kerala in ,north eastern area of India.Considerable increase in nos of fossil fuel vehicles are contributing more carbon emission, there is considerable amount of deforestation all over the globe inspite of this our mother earth has become much green as per your analysis ,this may be due to the fact that our mother earth manifests itself to overcome all the interferences that are being made on the nature.Therefore one should not interfere with nature.

  6. Narasappa Hosamani

    There is considerable amount of increase in greenery across India as per your satellite image ,but the effect of climate change is more in Indian peninsula ,the behaviour of monsoon has changed considerably across India.This needs to be explained.

    1. Yonason

      Yes, as Joe Bastardi explains, there is a dramatic DECREASE in tropical cyclonic activity of late. It’s very unusual. He doesn’t understand it either.

      1. Yonason

        In The Pacific, that is.

  7. tom0mason

    So as the planet exits the LIA and begins to warm again, much to the surprise of cAGW advocate numpties, the greening expands benefiting all terrestrial life in the area, and as it continues the soils will get deeper, more stable and thus expand more. Soils that are the key, soils are where the solar energy and CO2 are sequestered away for later use — again, much to the surprise of cAGW advocate numpties who only see it as a source of CO2.

    Indeed as all this greening expands then the new life will sequester away more CO2 and more solar energy.
    Next melt the Arctic pole and free-up the water cycle to do it’s majic in these same areas.

  8. Phil Salmon

    A new phenomenon has started happening annually – a huge mat of seaweed extending from the Caribbean Sargasso Sea all the way across the equatorial Atlantic to west Africa:

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190704191408.htm

    One of the reasons for this is fertiliser discharge from the Amazon.

    Another is cooling – not warming – of the ocean.

    1. Phil Salmon

      And a third reason not mentioned in the research report, but likely significant, is CO2 fertilisation.

    2. Yonason

      They always blame humans first.

      Saharan dust blown out over the Atlantic couldn’t POSSIBLY have anything to do with it.
      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080206192436.htm

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  10. pochas94

    Precipitation is how the earth stabilizes its temperature. If the oceans warm, evaporation increases to remove heat. When the water vapor rains out, the cold rain cools the surface and later evaporates removing more heat from the land areas. It’s negative feedback and, along with CO2 makes everything healthy. Unfortunately, we can at times get too much rain.

  11. Reasonable Skeptic

    What is a greenhouse? It is a place to grow plants where the local environment can’t sustain the production of plants economically.

    Step 1: Make an enclosure to increase the temperature.
    Step 2: Bring in plants
    Step 3: Provide water, fertilizer and CO2

    Who would have thought that warming the world and increasing CO2 would help bio-diversity?

  12. MS25

    Sahel greening is also related to the AMO warm phase.

    Food production and population tripled since last crisis, but what will happen here, once the AMO turns cold again?

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