Study finds a warming climate may reduce plant CO2 absorption

#climate change

"Study finds a warming climate may reduce plant CO2 absorption: Ok, this is not brilliant. The thinking had been that one of the breaks on climate change could be thriving plant life - loving all the CO2 - absorbing it and returning it to the soil. An extreme version of that logic can be found here. Unfortunately, a study published yesterday in Nature suggests that, as the climate warms, plants will, in fact, absorb less Co2 potentially accelerating the rate of climate change."We have this image of the planet getting very, very green as we move into the future," said Pierre Gentine, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University and an author of the study. "But it may be the opposite."

(Note by Melissa: the original scientific publication to be cited is:

Green et.al. (2019) Large influence of soil moisture on long-term terrestrial carbon uptake. Nature 565, 476-479. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0848-x)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/climate/plants-co2-climate-change.html