Greener climate prediction shows plants slow warming

A new NASA computer model has found that the additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled carbon dioxide levels would create a cooling effect in the Earth’s climate working to reduce future global warming. The cooling effect would be -0.5°F globally and -1.1°F over land.
Lahouari at Goddard Space Flight Center stressed that while the model’s results showed a cooling effect, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. Bounouao is lead author of a paper, “Quantifying the negative feedback of vegetation to greenhouse warming: A modeling approach”, detailing the results in Geophysical Research Letters.
The modeling approach also investigated how stimulation of plant growth in a world with doubled carbon dioxide levels would be fueled by warmer temperatures, increased precipitation in some regions and plants’ more efficient use of water due to carbon dioxide being more readily available in the atmosphere.