Our planet is not
turning into a hot desert
from the CO2 increase
in the atmosphere.
It's becoming greener
and more fertile,
as greenhouse
owners expected.
Analysis of satellite data
over four decades.
was published in 2016
in Nature Climate Change
showing the planet has become
greener over the past decades.
Researchers led by Zaichun Zhu
evaluated vegetation data
recorded by three satellites
between 1982 and 2009.
The evaluation showed since 1982,
the plant world has covered
a larger part of land surfaces.
“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 was responsible:
The scientists fed
ten global ecosystem
models with data on
greenhouse gas emissions,
land use and 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%
other effects such as
global warming ,
nitrogen deposition and
changes in land cover.
In high latitudes and in Tibet
and other highlands of the
mountains, the rise
in the average temperature
is responsible for vegetation
there became more luxuriant.
“Warming promotes photosynthesis
and prolongs the growing season,”
the researchers explain.
In the Sahel and South Africa,
increasing precipitation
makes the region more fertile
and greener.
In 40% of the world’s regions,
a significant increase
in leaf biomass was observed
between 1982 and 2015,
only 4% showed significant
losses of vegetation.
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 after the last ice age.
From there, agriculture spread
to Europe and Northern Europe.
In 2018, Venter et al. recorded
an 8% increase in timber vegetation
in sub-Saharan Africa over the
last three decades using satellites.
The Sahara covers
around 9.2 million
square kilometers.
8% of that is more than
700,000 square kilometers
-- an area almost as large as
Germany and France combined !
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”.
