NASA: Carbon dioxide fertilization greening Earth, study finds

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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.

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, fibre 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.”

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.

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.
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Read the paper at Nature Climate Change.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3004.html
 
Milagro said:
God almighty she will even worse than Obama, and that's saying something. Seems only Jimmy Carter had a science degree in Physics, most presidents are scientifically illiterate.
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Carter sold fertilizer and farm supplies......he was hardly an expert in physics....
 
NOVA said:
Carter sold fertilizer and farm supplies......he was hardly an expert in physics....
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He was educated in the public school of Plains, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. Chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/experts/jimmy_carter.html

Poor Blabo.
 
NOVA said:
Carter sold fertilizer and farm supplies......he was hardly an expert in physics....
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The salient point here is that the vast majority of presidents had very poor grounding in the sciences, at least Carter did a degree and worked with technology. Gore got a D- in the only science class he took.

He was educated in the Plains public schools, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. Chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was assigned to Schenectady, N.Y., where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.
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http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2002/carter-bio.html
 
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moon2012 said:
Burn the rainforests- help trees in Tibet. Straightjacket material.
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Idiot!

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Does misinterpreting NASA statements earn some form of reward from the climate-denying corporations ?

I'll bet there are pro-CO2 Internet propangandists trolling forums with misinterpretations . Oh, wait..........
 
Rana said:
Tom's standard answer for those who disagree with him on climate change, and he calls others arrogant, how ironic, everyone is stupid because Tom has a chemistry degree.
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I call anybody stupid who deserves it, simple as that. I will give you a concrete example when just recently I posted an article about research to reduce CO2 emissions from coal by up to 50% and you responded with a load of unrelated guff about Michael 'Hockey Stick' Mann. I have absolutely no problem with anybody having a differing viewpoint but I have little time for fools and this forum is infested with them. I have a very good friend that I've known since university days and he was a Environmental Science lecturer both at Oxford and Queen's University Belfast. We have many good natured discussions on climate change and we respect each other's viewpoint even though we are diametrically opposed on some of the issues. `
 
Milagro said:
I call anybody stupid who deserves it, simple as that. I will give you a concrete example when just recently I posted an article about research to reduce CO2 emissions from coal by up to 50% and you responded with a load of unrelated guff about Michael 'Hockey Stick' Mann. I have absolutely no problem with anybody having a differing viewpoint but I have little time for fools and this forum is infested with them. I have a very good friend that I've known since university days and he was a Environmental Science lecturer both at Oxford and Queen's University Belfast. We have many good natured discussions on climate change and we respect each other's viewpoint even though we are diametrically opposed on some of the issues. `
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Neither moon or myself deserve to be called stupid. You just don't like that the majority of people who actually have degrees in climate related fields don't agree with you.
 
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