Global warming would be worse were it not for extra vegetation that changes how and where heat builds up across the landscape.
For at least a century, air, ocean, and land temperatures on Earth have been steadily rising. For at least the past forty years, the planet has been growing a bit greener. Now researchers have found that the greening of the planet can change the movement of air near the land surface in ways that offset at least some warming. Essentially, global warming would be even worse were it not for extra greenery changing how and where heat builds up across the landscape.
In 2019, remote sensing scientists Chi Chen, Ranga Myneni, and colleagues at Boston University used satellite observations to show that vegetation cover had increased globally by 5 percent since the early 2000s. In 2020, the research group linked that increase in greenness to a slight offset in global temperatures.
Now, in a new study, Chen and colleagues have worked to decipher how that greening could affect land temperatures. Using satellite data and advanced computer models, they found that increased vegetation has a cooling effect that comes from an increased efficiency in the vertical movement of heat and water vapor between the land surface and atmosphere.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
