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Elevated carbon dioxide making arid regions greener
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-24.shtml[font face=Serif][font size=5]Elevated carbon dioxide making arid regions greener[/font]
31 May 2013
AGU Release No. 13-24
[font size=3]WASHINGTON, DC—Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010.
Focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa, Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia and his colleagues developed and applied a mathematical model to predict the extent of the carbon-dioxide (CO[font size="1"]2[/font]) fertilization effect. They then tested this prediction by studying satellite imagery and teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.
The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO[font size="1"]2[/font] concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.
“Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot of speculation about what’s causing that,” said Donohue of CSIRO’s Land and Water research division, who is lead author of the new study. “Up until this point, they’ve linked the greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall where it is normally dry. Lots of those papers speculated about the CO[font size="1"]2[/font] effect, but it has been very difficult to prove.”
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/grl.5056331 May 2013
AGU Release No. 13-24
[font size=3]WASHINGTON, DC—Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010.
Focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa, Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia and his colleagues developed and applied a mathematical model to predict the extent of the carbon-dioxide (CO[font size="1"]2[/font]) fertilization effect. They then tested this prediction by studying satellite imagery and teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.
The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO[font size="1"]2[/font] concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.
“Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot of speculation about what’s causing that,” said Donohue of CSIRO’s Land and Water research division, who is lead author of the new study. “Up until this point, they’ve linked the greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall where it is normally dry. Lots of those papers speculated about the CO[font size="1"]2[/font] effect, but it has been very difficult to prove.”
…[/font][/font]
6 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
will be the headline in DU's LBN in the year 10,013. DU'ers will be upset about 'desertification' caused by the loss of CO2 in the atmosphere.
You heard it here first. Some DU'er 8,000 years from now will find this post using 'advanced search' and prove me right. 
