New Study: 2001-2020 ‘Global Greening Is An Indisputable Fact’ And It’s Driven By CO2 Fertilization

“Our results showed that the global greening was still present in 2001–2020, with 55.15% of areas greening at an accelerated rate…compared with 7.28% of browning.” – Chen et al., 2024

The CO2 fertilization effect has been dominant driver of the global-scale increase in “leaf area index” (LAI), or greening, since the 1980s. Scientists have estimated that CO2’s photosynthesis-enhancing capacity is 70% responsible for the greening trend (Zhu et al., 2016).

Using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data sources of questionable quality, some recent studies have suggested the greening trend has slowed or has even been reversed to browning since the 21st century began. As suggested, these data sources “should be used in caution” (Chen et al., 2024) as it is “well known that AVHRR-based NDVI and LAI have multiple sources of uncertainty,” such as “obvious artificial signals from the orbital drift.”

Using much more reliable MODIS data, scientists (Chen et al., 2024) can now say the LAI trend in the 21st century is robustly positive, and that 2001-2020 “global greening is an indisputable fact.”

The satellite data indicate 55.15% of global areas are greening “at an accelerated rate,” whereas just 7.28% have undergone a browning trend since 2001.

CO2 fertilization is still the dominant (75.63%) driver of Earth’s 21st century greening trend. Any drought trends in recent decades cannot overtake the positive CO2 fertilization effect, as all drought can do is slightly slow down the acceleration of the CO2-induced greening trend.

Image Source: Chen et al., 2024

9 responses to “New Study: 2001-2020 ‘Global Greening Is An Indisputable Fact’ And It’s Driven By CO2 Fertilization”

  1. Kelvin Vaughan

    And more greening means more fuel for wildfires.

    1. Michael Davison

      Wildfires have existed since the dawn of time, nature has adapted and uses “wildfires” to improve growth, thinning out over growth, clearing away debris, but what the heck, why spoil a good scare story.

  2. Alex

    While Putin and the Ayatollahs of Iran are preparing for a world war situation, our politicians keep harping about catastrophic climate change. In case of an all out war, Putin will render Europe powerless by simply hitting wind turbines and the transmission infrastructure, fragile as they are. Madness had set in decades ago.

  3. NUOVO STUDIO: 2001-2020 "L'INVERDIMENTO GLOBALE È UN FATTO INDISCUTIBILE" ED È GUIDATO DALLA FERTILIZZAZIONE CON CO2

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  4. John Hultquist

    Fertilization – There is a linguistic conundrum here.

    For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macro nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements . . . . [Wikipedia]

    Carbon Dioxide from the air is the main plant food. Without 180 ppm or more of CO2 in the atmosphere animals and people would soon become extinct. So, the basic food of plants is airborne and not part of soil.

    1. Avianthro

      Your point is good, and yet we really should understand that plants need the combination of all essential inputs, and in proper balance too: minerals (like P and K), N from the air or in soil components, water (H), CO2 and sunlight. It’s really hard to say therefore that any one of those is the main plant food since they’re all essential.

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