New Study: ‘Widespread Increase’ In Plant Transpiration Driven By Increasing CO2 Concentration

“…higher atmospheric CO2…triggers…increased vegetation production and a greener landscape”  – Chen et al., 2024

Plant transpiration is vital to plant growth and terrestrial ecosystems.

The rising CO2 trend over the last 30 years (1990-2020) has been the primary driver of planetary greening, or increases in Leaf Area Index (LAI).

The greening, in turn, is predominantly responsible for the widespread increase in plant transpiration over this period.

These elevated trends in greening and plant transpiration are expected to continue unabated to 2100, accelerating with the increases in emissions.

“The trend attribution analysis results show that the change in leaf area index (LAI) can explain 66.2% of the global PT trend, indicating that elevated LAI due to global greening is the dominant factor contributing to the upward trend in global PT. The elevated LAI can be largely attributed to the CO2 fertilization effect induced by elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration.”

Image Source: Chen et al., 2024