Research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published online Dec. 8 showed that an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led plants to photosynthesize more, though it will not be enough to stop climate change.
According to the Berkeley Lab news release, photosynthesis is the process through which plants make their own food. The study states that photosynthesis results in the single largest transfer of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the biosphere.
One part of the process includes plants opening up tiny pores on their leaves to take in carbon dioxide from the air. According to lead author Trevor Keenan, the study measures how photosynthesis has been increasing and how that might affect climate change.
“The results report that global photosynthesis has been increasing over the past few decades due to the effects of elevated CO2 in the atmosphere,” Keenan said in an email. “This increase is leading to enhanced carbon uptake by ecosystems, which serves to slow the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus climate change.”
Traditionally, scientists from across the world have built and used more than 500 micrometeorological towers in ecosystems to measure the transfer of gases from the atmosphere to and from the vegetation and soil, according to the Berkeley Lab news release.
The release also states that these towers are expensive and limited in how much land they cover, forcing scientists to rely on satellite imagery to see how much of the Earth is covered by plants. With these towers, scientists could make inferences on photosynthesis around the world.
Keenan’s team took a new approach, according to the news release. The team examined models of the terrestrial biosphere and combined them with global carbon cycle estimates to predict the change in photosynthesis over time, according to Keenan.
“The research will lead to further development of the models used to predict the future of the Earth system, including climate change projections,” Keenan said in the email. “We focused on the historic changes in the land sink in this study, but next we need to figure out how likely these historic increases in photosynthesis are going to continue into the future.”
Keenan added that the team expects that at some point the photosynthesis rates will no longer increase as more and more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. This would lead to climate change happening much faster.
According to the Berkeley Lab news release, the study highlights the significance of protecting ecosystems that are slowing the rate of climate change.
Contact Diego Lapayese-Calderón at dlapayesecalderon@dailycal.org, and follow him on Twitter at @diego_lapayese.