Plant Productivity Reduction with Climate Change

NASA: Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth published 08.19.10 […]

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Climate State

Date Posted:

September 23, 2013

A snapshot of Earth's plant productivity in 2003 shows regions of increased productivity (green) and decreased productivity (red). Tracking productivity between 2000 and 2009, researchers found a global net decrease due to regional drought. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
A snapshot of Earth’s plant productivity in 2003 shows regions of increased productivity (green) and decreased productivity (red). Tracking productivity between 2000 and 2009, researchers found a global net decrease due to regional drought. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

NASA: Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth

published 08.19.10 by Kathryn Hansen | Source
Earth has done an ecological about-face: Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought. NASA-funded researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running, of the University of Montana in Missoula, discovered the global shift during an analysis of NASA satellite data. Compared with a six-percent increase spanning two earlier decades, the recent ten-year decline is slight — just one percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels, and the global carbon cycle.

“We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested that global warming might actually help plant growth around the world,” Running said.

“These results are extraordinarily significant because they show that the global net effect of climatic warming on the productivity of terrestrial vegetation need not be positive — as was documented for the 1980’s and 1990’s,” said Diane Wickland, of NASA Headquarters and manager of NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology research program.

Conventional wisdom based on previous research held that land plant productivity was on the rise. A 2003 paper in Science led by then University of Montana scientist Ramakrishna Nemani (now at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.) showed that global terrestrial plant productivity increased as much as six percent between 1982 and 1999. That’s because for nearly two decades, temperature, solar radiation and water availability — influenced by climate change — were favorable for growth.

Interannual shifts in plant productivity (green line) fluctuated in step with shifts in atmospheric carbon dioxide (red line) between 2000 through 2009. Credit: Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running
Interannual shifts in plant productivity (green line) fluctuated in step with shifts in atmospheric carbon dioxide (red line) between 2000 through 2009. Credit: Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running

Setting out to update that analysis, Zhao and Running expected to see similar results as global average temperatures have continued to climb. Instead, they found that the impact of regional drought overwhelmed the positive influence of a longer growing season, driving down global plant productivity between 2000 and 2009. The team published their findings Aug. 20 in Science.

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“This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth,” Running said.

The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, combined with growing season climate variables including temperature, solar radiation and water. The plant and climate data are factored into an algorithm that describes constraints on plant growth at different geographical locations.

For example, growth is generally limited in high latitudes by temperature and in deserts by water. But regional limitations can very in their degree of impact on growth throughout the growing season.

Zhao and Running’s analysis showed that since 2000, high-latitude northern hemisphere ecosystems have continued to benefit from warmer temperatures and a longer growing season. But that effect was offset by warming-associated drought that limited growth in the southern hemisphere, resulting in a net global loss of land productivity.

“This past decade’s net decline in terrestrial productivity illustrates that a complex interplay between temperature, rainfall, cloudiness, and carbon dioxide, probably in combination with other factors such as nutrients and land management, will determine future patterns and trends in productivity,” Wickland said.

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25 Comments

  1. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 12:37 am - Reply

    Plant love carbon emissions. Liars. Global-Warming is merely a political
    Agenda, a scam.

  2. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 8:23 am - Reply

    spare me your ignorant and paranoid nonsense. go watch some Alex Jones
    video and STFU.

  3. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 9:30 am - Reply

    You are defying Elementary Science that says: * Carbon is a plant food. *
    Sea water evaporates with heat, therefore creating more moisture and rain *
    That Vivariums/Greenhouses plateau heat not keep increasing as the heat
    produces balancing factors. You call me paranoid, but maybe you should look
    int he mirror and ask yourself are you indoctrinated and domesticated, or
    simply are you a Communist Zionist type.

  4. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 9:42 am - Reply

    Then you fall into the Indoctrinated/Domesticated option I left you. In
    Australia the weather has been fairly cold the last few decades. I hope it
    returns to proper summers, but it seems the World is heading into a mini
    ice age. Ice ages are nothing new, though, like droughts and hot summers.
    The World is a diverse place. If humans can stop anything is Chem-Trails,
    Cloud Seeding, and GMO’s.

  5. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 10:00 am - Reply

    LOL moron, Australia just had one of ist warmest summer…. we are already
    in an ice Age moron. on a global scale, the LIA was almost not detectable.

  6. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 10:01 am - Reply

    lol yeah more anti Science, with your Anti GMO nonsense. Chemtrails? more
    paranoid nonsense.

  7. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 10:12 am - Reply

    i have read propably all of the CT’s out there. i like CT’s they are like
    Fantasy novels. just based on real names and places etc. but nontheless
    Fantasy.

  8. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 10:24 am - Reply

    Well you stick to your FLAT-EARTHER group.

  9. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 10:28 am - Reply

    You remind me of the FLAT-EARTHERS. Anyone that contested flat-earth theory
    where heretics. The fact is Fraternity-Science employs people who sprout
    words for money and for political and dark-religious agendas. They have to
    pay their homes off and then consider the PEER PRESSURE FACTOR and those
    with left-brain type thinking. Probably had their frontal lobes burnt out
    with weaponised vaccines.

  10. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 10:44 am - Reply

    be your own scientist? well good luck trying to figure out the cliamte
    System moron.

  11. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 10:48 am - Reply

    No FLAT EARHERS are those that use peer pressure to lock people down to a
    claim, as is Climate-Change/Global-Warming. I agree the Greeks and Bible
    People already knew the Earth was round. But the Roman Order, the
    Dark-Religion and their Science Seers locked people into thinking it was
    flat. The same Zionist Order works to push Global-Warming as fact and the
    minions sprout the tripe irrespective of observable facts there is no
    general warming or fear needed.

  12. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 11:00 am - Reply

    It’s not science, it’s Fraternity-Science.

  13. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 11:05 am - Reply

    ok i take that as a clear no, you have no science to over….. go watch
    some David Icke Videos or some “docus” about chemtrails. go get your bias
    confirmed by CT Videos.

  14. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 11:24 am - Reply

    If you think the current Leaders of the World are Atheists, you are sorely
    mistaken. Atheism is taught to the CATTLE PEOPLE who will later be
    slaughtered.

  15. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 11:26 am - Reply

    you seriously Need help, your Paranoia is extreme.

  16. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 12:01 pm - Reply

    And you’re ignorance is seriously childish. So you think the likes of
    Rothschilds are Athiests. So you think there is no Eugenics/Depopulation
    movement behind Global-Warming Agenda. You are clearly wrong. A teen or
    child at mind with heavy indoctrination. How many Vaccines have you had…

  17. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 12:09 pm - Reply

    i even drank water with Fluor in it…… so you think the Rothschilds are
    leaders of the world? i have seen nothing that would even indicate
    depopulation etc. actually the contrary is the case, what is promoted is
    green growth. only with growth we can solve the AGW Problem. well atleast
    according to the IPCC: you are clearly nuts and lack scepticism when it
    Comes to CT’s you found on the Internet.

  18. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 12:15 pm - Reply

    Rothschilds own most of the World fool. Said to be 1/3. Heard of the
    Georgia Guidestones? 500million pop plan. Ever research Eugenics? David
    Attenborough, David Suzuki, Bill Gates, etc are famous Eugenicists. Heard
    of Tikkun Olam, the Zionist plan to depopulate to 15K slaves per Jew, a
    World in Balance. You seriously have no footing to talk as you put up a
    wall on history, religion, politics, and elementary-science.

  19. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 12:16 pm - Reply

    I will no be replying to you any more. Good luck surviving in the communist
    world you are promoting.

  20. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 12:21 pm - Reply

    how does Eugenics and depopulation fit together? it contradicts
    eachother…… and your antisemitic conspiracy theories are disgusting i
    really hope you do not respond anymore.

  21. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 12:22 pm - Reply

    i never have nor will i ever promote a communist world.

  22. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 12:37 pm - Reply

    Global Warming Agenda is the promotion of Communism, Carbon-Communism.
    People in a Carbon-Communist Regime will be restricted based on carbon
    interaction. All controlled at a global level, removing free will. The
    people designing the CARBON AGENDA don’t want you off the grid. They wont
    you dead or a slave. It’s as simple as that.

  23. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 12:48 pm - Reply

    you are insane. totally insane. lucky most People laugha t Clowns like you
    and don’t take your nonsense serious. seek help.

  24. MovingEntity September 24, 2013 at 1:04 pm - Reply

    You’re too common to understand. You put up walls and parrot the
    propaganda. Cattle for the slaughter.

  25. Aanthanur DC September 24, 2013 at 1:18 pm - Reply

    didn’t you say you will not reply anymore to me? pls Keep that promise.

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