Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

https://www.noaa.gov/news/study-global-plant-growth-surging-alongside-carbon-dioxide

by morpheos137 • 5 years ago

112 137 5 years ago

Not a scientist or otherwise expert, but this seems like a silver lining in the climate change that will eventually lead to humans not being able to inhabit the planet and the impact people are having on the planet: plants get more food and grow more. Am I wrong in that thought?

gmuslera2• 5 years ago

Plants get more carbon, but not more minerals or elements that are only in the soil. And that may mean more volume, maybe more calories, but less food.

That, even if we assume that we get to an stable and livable weather plateau, and not an ever increasing global warming, extreme weather, and livable conditions for every animal and plant.

And even in that plateau, if the ecosystem that make that plants to live (I don't know, bees, worms, bacteria and so on) don't make it the plants won't be good for long neither.

stupendousyappi2• 5 years ago

Over the very long term, I see no reason to think that higher CO2 levels are fundamentally worse for life than pre-industrial levels. In general, plants are the foundation of the food chain, and higher CO2 levels are better for them. In addition, life depends on liquid water, and given that surface temperatures are generally closer to the freezing point of water than the boiling point, I could see how higher temperatures might increase the amount of land and ocean surface hospitable to life. The problem is the transition period, during which most things go extinct until evolution can slowly regenerate the lost diversity over 10+ million years.

DJBunnies• 5 years ago

Did anybody else expect this? Plants love CO2, seems like excess will lead to crazy plant growth and a rebalance.

dreamcompiler• 5 years ago

So far it's the first confirmed case of negative feedback from global warming that I've seen, and that makes me hopeful.

johnnyApplePRNG2• 5 years ago

Another one is smoke from forest fires; actively cooling the planet.

stupendousyappi2• 5 years ago

There are several others. I'm not a climate scientist, but my understanding is that the most significant potential negative feedback loop by far is the potential for increased cloud cover from increased humidity. It's evidently the most difficult aspect of global warming to model, although climate scientists are making continuous progress. In addition, the marginal radiative forcing of CO2 decreases with its concentration, which means both that increases in emissions do less harm as things get worse, and that reductions in emissions do less good.

flavius296634• 5 years ago

Global warming means more water in the air. This is both a positive feedback (water is an excellent heat trap) and negative in the form of clouds. White clouds increase the albedo of the planet, rejecting heat.

Another negative feedback is the increased intake of CO2 by oceans, through difussion. Also the plankton consumes more CO2.

It makes sense, think about it: if the planet didn't have negative feedbacks, absolutely any event would potentially cause a runoff through positive feedback in warmings and throw the climate out of balance. Even something like a vulcanic eruption or forest fire in the middle ages: without the negative feedback, CO2 would cause warming, which causes more water, which causes warming...there must be some serious negative feedback loops, which is why we've almost doubled the warming effect of CO2 with (so far) very small influences on the climate.

pvaldes4• 5 years ago

The problem is that humans love to destroy plants.

Crazy plant growth does not matter if we have unprecedented megafires each year and in several continents at the same time.

morpheos1379• 5 years ago

Have a look at google earth some time. What franction of temperate and tropical land mass outside of deserts is some shade of green? Probably in excess of 95%. There are a lot of plants on Earth.

nealabq2• 5 years ago

Plants also love humidity. It seems likely that global warming leads to more water vapor in the air.

xyzwave• 5 years ago

Yes, as oceans warm, more water vapor is being released into the atmosphere. Water vapor is far more effective than CO2 at trapping heat, and is therefore driving one of global warming’s most extreme positive feedback loops [1].

1. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...

toomim• 5 years ago

Yes, many scientists have predicted this, but unfortunately the act of articulating a positive effect of CO2 tends to get you labeled "climate denier" and censored from many parts of the media, and thus we aren't very aware of the bigger picture of climate change. Here's an articulation from one of the Greenpeace Cofounders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc

He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.

jacobwilliamroy2• 5 years ago

I have no idea what happened to Patrick Moore. He's not actually an environmentalist anymore. He just uses his past affiliation with Greenpeace to make money being a spokesman for companies like Exxon and Monsanto. He doesn't actually care if you live or die. He just wants you to spend more money on fossil fuels.

syops• 5 years ago

Do you know of any examples of a climate scientist or biologist predicting this and being labeled a climate denier for stating this prediction? I would be very much surprised if it wasn't common knowledge amongst climate scientists that this is one result of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.

p1necone• 5 years ago

This is nonsense. More CO2 === faster plant growth is not some suppressed secret, this is basic science that people have known about for ages, and nobody is going to get labelled anything unless they're mentioning it as part of some bad faith argument.

Climate change deniers love stuff like this though, you can bring it up in a bullet point list of "why climate change isn't a big deal" or whatever and push your false narrative without any of the individual points being false. People who bring this fact up and are subsequently labelled climate change deniers are being labelled that because of the context and content of their whole argument, not because one specific true fact was mentioned.

It's also a bit disingenuous to talk about Patrick Moore as a Greenpeace Co-founder without any context about what he's been up to since 1986 when he left the organization. This is just an appeal to authority that's only tenuously linked to reality.

Stop being disingenuous just so you can feed your persecution complex with strangers on the internet.

dukeyukey• 5 years ago

My understanding is that this has been known for decades, it's not like it's been suppressed.

He also notes that increased CO2 can help boost agriculture productivity, making it easier to feed the world's population.

In cooler countries, this is indeed the case. However, most of the world's population lives in warmer regions, meaning even if we have plenty of food, it's poorer countries that will lack it, so we'll still get climate refugees.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

Depends on what happens with the vegetative growth. If it is cut down or otherwise dies, decomposition will release CO2. Systems like that can often be carbon neutral if they regrow again. Human development is destroying what could be longterm carbon sinks, though, and so is climate change.

Lammy• 5 years ago

If science-fiction counts then Jeffrey Jones expected it in 1972's "Wholly Holy": https://i.imgur.com/DmbQANH.jpg (mildly NSFW art)

His 33-page "Ravens & Rainbows" collection has this and several other great short sci-fi stories in that old "Heavy Metal" comic style that's rarely seen these days, but same NSFW disclaimer applies: https://imgur.com/a/M0JUTSx

Cycl0ps• 5 years ago

From the article, the study assumes that COS is released primarily from plants. Are there any industrial processes that could be releasing this as a byproduct? The claim seems like it could be better tested by measuring COS in a controlled atmosphere.

jmclnx• 5 years ago

I have been noticing were I live, it has been getting greener and greener for many years 30+. First time I saw conformation on this.

Inhibit• 5 years ago

Certainly the same here for the past 20 years. Although not the same year to year the plants do seem to be growing more vigorously overall.

So we now have a sample size of two :).

sha256kira• 5 years ago

The last time I went to Wisconsin and New York it seemed way greener than ~8 years ago. So make that sample size three (or maybe even four?)!

code_duck2• 5 years ago

Where I lived in northern Minnesota has been getting greener, but mainly, I think, because the winter is shorter by 2-3 weeks on both sides versus 80 years ago.

Certainly green in Denver this year but it’s because we have received 50% more rain than usual.

haram_masala• 5 years ago

Same here. Weeding and trimming my small yard now fills my weekly compost bin, that never used to happen in the past couple of decades.

martinpw• 5 years ago

The link in the article to the original Nature paper is broken. Anyone have a valid link?

_delirium2• 5 years ago

There's an extra period at the end of the URL. Works if you take it off. Alternately, here's a DOI permalink: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22030

bryan02• 5 years ago

How do climate change models currently account for increase in plants? Are these plant growth numbers in line with expectations? Is this a large change or a rounding error in those models?

roter• 5 years ago

Any global climate model worth its salt will have a comprehensive carbon cycle submodel, tracking the sources and sinks of carbon in all its forms, between ocean, soil, land, and atmosphere. Some models evolve the amount and type of plants e.g. C1 to project future biome distribution [0]

One such model is aptly named TRIFFID [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/35041539

Edit: non-paywall link to TRIFFID paper [3]

[3] http://terra.seos.uvic.ca/model/common/HCTN_24.pdf

phkahler• 5 years ago

One would hope they also have a comprehensive water vapor model including con-trails but last I checked it was still a research area.

alecst• 5 years ago

I heard John Baez call this "CO2 fertilization". And it's been talked about for a while. Hard to predict the effect, but the consensus seems to range from "could help, sorta" to "not really important".

https://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Carbon+dioxide+f...

The details of CO2 fertilization matter a lot. It could make the difference between their original plan being roughly good enough… and being nowhere near good enough!

Check the page for more info on young vs old trees, nitrogen limits, etc.

There's also this page, which has an even more pessimistic take.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-...

bryan02• 5 years ago

Wow thanks for this link. I’m familiar with John baez’s writings on physics and category theory, I didn’t realize how deep he went into climate change though.

Anyway after reading this I think I can answer my original questions a bit: Yes increased plant growth is a critical and part of climate change models. IPCC is predicting an increase of 6G tons of carbon consumed by plants by 2050 and without this we could not hit our carbon goals. Hopefully this research shows that our models are not overestimating here.

nealabq2• 5 years ago

I assume plant life is constrained by different things in different locations:

- lack of water

- too hot

- too cold

- not enough light (ground level of the rain forest?)

- lack of soil nutrients (rain forest?)

- too much salt

I'll add CO2 levels to my mental list, a constraint that's independent of location.

thaumasiotes3• 5 years ago

I assume plant life is constrained by different things in different locations:
- lack of water
- too hot
- too cold

Hmm. There are lots of examples where plants do not grow in an area that (1) has a lot of water; and (2) is very cold. Are there any examples of a place that is too hot, as opposed to too dry?

Even the cold examples might be driven more by a lack of liquid water than by temperature requirements.

burnte• 5 years ago

Too hot and plants can't properly regulate water loss, shrivel, and die. Too cold, even well above freezing, and they can have problems moving their liquids due to increased viscosity. In both extremes you can have temps too far from optimal that inhibit enzyme reactions, killing the plants.

wumpus• 5 years ago

The hottest day of the growing season can significantly damage wheat and corn yields, despite typical rainfall.

Google [corn yield too hot].

klyrs• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how you'd separate 'too hot' from 'too dry' -- problem being that places that are too hot to support plant life will rapidly undergo desertification, and then they'll be too dry.

kuhewa2• 5 years ago

Are there any examples of a place that is too hot, as opposed to too dry?

For a given species of plant, yes.

For cold-adapted plants, like those in the arctic, too warm of a winter could mean carbohydrate exhaustion due the increased metabolism, which would mean spring starvation. With climate change we see such species retreating to higher elevation or toward the poles.

bpodgursky• 5 years ago

It's little more subtle, but yes overall true. Higher CO2 makes it easier for plants to photosynthesize using less water, so they can grow in previously-too-dry locations.

code_duck2• 5 years ago

Soil/water pH is very important. When pH is off, some nutrients are unavailable to plants even when present in otherwise adequate quantities.

You also have to account for insects and microbes, which can either totally destroy a plant or help, in the case of soil fungi, earthworms or pollinators.

Too much light can be a problem, too. Not only from heat, but simply overexposure.

tuatoru• 5 years ago

Yes, this is an extension of Liebig's Law of the Minimum[1]: growth is constrained by whatever nutrient is scarcest (relative to the needs of the growing organism), by extending "nutrient" to "environmental input" to include temperature, light and toxins.

1. https://earthwiseagriculture.net/grower-s-toolbox/law-of-min...

Nbox9• 5 years ago

We’ve known about this effect for awhile. Tree growth has increased on volume but decreased in density since the industrial revolution[0]. A small bump in plant growth can not be seen as anything but the smallest of a silver lining.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811271...

kibwen• 5 years ago

Saving people a click for the abstract:

"Forest stand growth dynamics in Central Europe have accelerated since 1870 due to a rise in temperature, extended growing seasons, and other components of climate change. Based on wood samples from the oldest existing experimental plots in Central Europe, we show that the dominant tree species Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H.Karst.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Mattuschka) Liebl.) exhibit a significant decrease in wood density since more than 100 years. While stand and trees grow faster with respect to wood volume, we can show that wood density decreased by 8–12% since 1900. These results object a naïve direct transformation of volume growth trends into an accelerated biomass production. Since 1900, stand biomass increment increased 9–24 percentage points less compared to volume increment (29–100% increase reduces to 20–76%). For a given stem diameter and annual ring width, tree stability against windthrow, wood strength, energy content and C sequestration are even reduced under recent conditions. The generally decreased late wood density, partly going along with an increased early wood fraction, suggests the observed extension of the growing season and fertilization effect of dry deposition as the main causes. Our results indicate that current increased wood volume growth rates must not be straightforwardly converted into sequestrated C and biomass harvest potentials assuming historic values for wood density. This should be taken into account in monitoring, modeling, and utilization of carbon and biomass in forests under global change."

dr_dshiv• 5 years ago

Hmm, that doesn't shout "plants absorb 30% more CO2 than we thought" as discussed in this thread.

seattle_spring2• 5 years ago

A small bump in plant growth can not be seen as anything but the smallest of a silver lining.

It could also be seen as a bad thing. Forest fire season in the PNW is a lot worse in years with a wetter spring followed by a dry summer. This is because the extra moisture encourages thicker brush growth, which then dries up and serves as tinder and fuel for the fires later in the season.

I would think extra plant growth in dry areas combined with any sort of warming trend, would end up acting similarly.

occamrazor2• 5 years ago

The article is mostly discussing trees, not bushes.

colechristensen3• 5 years ago

A 30% bump in plant carbon sinking isn't a small bump, it's a major negative feedback control on atmospheric carbon.

Some people seem to have the attitude that if you aren't saying something negative about an environmental topic, you shouldn't be saying anything.

edrxty• 5 years ago

It's more that it's an unspoken thing. Those of us who understand these issues aren't going out of our way to provide an excuse for dissonance to the masses or worse, easily misrepresented ammunition for the talking heads. The underlying systems are obviously complex but the end result is simple and society is currently having a hard time processing things that aren't simple.

kortex• 5 years ago

Sure, it's better than nothing. But carbon output has increased X% compared to pre-industrial times, where X is some mind-boggling number.

jbotz2• 5 years ago

A 30% bump in plant carbon sinking

Plant growth by itself is not a carbon sink. It just adds to the "buffer size" for the short-term carbon cycle. For some of that carbon to be "sunk" it has to either be removed and used/stored in a way that doesn't put that carbon back into the atmosphere, or transformed into long-term stable humic and vulvic substances, or buried in an anaerobic environment under pressure so it'll eventually turn into petroleum.

Also the CO2 fertilization effect also has negative consequences... enough so that it's really far from clear whether it's a net postive, even a small one. For one thing it's one of the reasons why modern food has significantly lower nutrient density (plants, including crop plants are growing faster, but the additional mass is almost pure carbohydrates, very little additional proteins, minerals, etc.). And in the tropical rainforests, the plants that are most benefiting from CO2 fertilization are fast-growing vines, and they are literally choking off tree growth (there have been papers published about this).

elif• 5 years ago

Biospheric carbon is miniscule compared to atmospheric carbon. Not only that, the biosphere is not a permanent carbon-sink. The extra 30% plant growth in spring becomes 30% extra carbon from plant decay in fall.

And regardless, any effect that increased plant growth rates provide is already factored into our runaway atmospheric carbon rate.

kuhewa2• 5 years ago

It can also have some negative consequences for imperilled ecosystems. African savannahs are becoming more shrubby for example, which will favour some species at the expense of others.

ngcc_hk• 5 years ago

Do not have science but over 20 years driving around one can see the bare mountain covered with more and more trees … crazily green these days. Question is thus negative feedback loop does not help enough unfortunately.

_delirium2• 5 years ago

(2017)

blondie9x• 5 years ago

People never ever forget that all of this is not in anyway what so ever has slowed down the exponential increase in greenhouse gases. SF6 CH4 CO2 N2O all growing year over year near record levels.

Human consumption and population growth needs to level flatline. Now.

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/

Uhhrrr• 5 years ago

A more recent paper on this says carbonyl sulfide peaked forty years ago: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD03...

Study: Global plant growth surging alongside carbon dioxide (2017)

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