Articles | Volume 18, issue 17
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4985-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4985-2021
Research article
 | 
13 Sep 2021
Research article |  | 13 Sep 2021

Slowdown of the greening trend in natural vegetation with further rise in atmospheric CO2

Alexander J. Winkler, Ranga B. Myneni, Alexis Hannart, Stephen Sitch, Vanessa Haverd, Danica Lombardozzi, Vivek K. Arora, Julia Pongratz, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Daniel S. Goll, Etsushi Kato, Hanqin Tian, Almut Arneth, Pierre Friedlingstein, Atul K. Jain, Sönke Zaehle, and Victor Brovkin

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Cited articles

Abis, B. and Brovkin, V.: Environmental conditions for alternative tree-cover states in high latitudes, Biogeosciences, 14, 511–527, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-511-2017, 2017. a
Adler, R. F., Gu, G., Sapiano, M., Wang, J.-J., and Huffman, G. J.: Global Precipitation: Means, Variations and Trends During the Satellite Era (1979–2014), Surv. Geophys., 38, 679–699, https://doi.org/10.1007/S10712-017-9416-4, 2017. a, b
Aldrich, S., Walker, R., Simmons, C., Caldas, M., and Perz, S.: Contentious Land Change in the Amazon's Arc of Deforestation, Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr., 102, 103–128, https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.620501, 2012. a
Anav, A., Friedlingstein, P., Kidston, M., Bopp, L., Ciais, P., Cox, P., Jones, C., Jung, M., Myneni, R., and Zhu, Z.: Evaluating the Land and Ocean Components of the Global Carbon Cycle in the CMIP5 Earth System Models, J. Climate, 26, 6801–6843, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00417.1, 2013. a
Anderson, L. O., Ribeiro Neto, G., Cunha, A. P., Fonseca, M. G., Mendes de Moura, Y., Dalagnol, R., Wagner, F. H., and de Aragão, L. E. O. e. C.: Vulnerability of Amazonian Forests to Repeated Droughts, Philos. T. Roy. Soc. B, 373, 20170411, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0411, 2018. a
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Satellite observations since the early 1980s show that Earth's greening trend is slowing down and that browning clusters have been emerging, especially in the last 2 decades. A collection of model simulations in conjunction with causal theory points at climatic changes as a key driver of vegetation changes in natural ecosystems. Most models underestimate the observed vegetation browning, especially in tropical rainforests, which could be due to an excessive CO2 fertilization effect in models.
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