The study published in Nature Geoscience, titled “Sustained Greening of the Antarctic Peninsula Observed from Satellites,” focuses on the observed increase in vegetation, particularly moss-dominated ecosystems, on the Antarctic Peninsula (AP). While it attributes this “greening” to recent regional warming trends, the paper conspicuously neglects the broader global phenomenon known as carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilization or global greening, which has been documented worldwide. Instead, it takes a rather narrow and selective approach, focusing on the correlation between temperature rise and greening in this specific cold-climate ecosystem, largely ignoring the established role of CO2 in enhancing plant growth globally.
Abstract
The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced considerable anthropogenic warming in recent decades. While cryospheric responses are well defined, the responses of moss-dominated terrestrial ecosystems have not been quantified. Analysis of Landsat archives (1986–2021) using a Google Earth Engine cloud-processing workflow suggest widespread greening across the Antarctic Peninsula. The area of likely vegetation cover increased from 0.863 km2 in 1986 to 11.947 km2 in 2021, with an accelerated rate of change in recent years (2016–2021: 0.424 km2 yr−1) relative to the study period (1986–2021: 0.317 km2 yr−1). This trend echoes a wider pattern of greening in cold-climate ecosystems in response to recent warming, suggesting future widespread changes in the Antarctic Peninsula’s terrestrial ecosystems and their long-term functioning.
This omission is significant because the greening of cold regions like the Antarctic Peninsula could easily be explained as part of the broader CO2-driven global greening trend, which has been observed across a variety of ecosystems, from tropical forests to temperate and boreal regions. Global greening is not just limited to cold-climate ecosystems; rather, it’s a pervasive effect driven by increased atmospheric CO2, which enhances plant growth efficiency through a process known as carbon fertilization. Yet, the authors of this study appear to cherry-pick data and studies focusing almost exclusively on temperature as the driver of this greening, while downplaying or ignoring the impact of CO2 enrichment, a factor that has been widely accepted in the scientific community.
The Premise of the Study and Its Narrow Focus on Temperature
The core premise of the study is that the observed greening of the Antarctic Peninsula over recent decades is primarily the result of warming driven by anthropogenic climate change. The authors reference warming trends over the past 60 years, particularly on the West Antarctic and Antarctic Peninsula, regions that have experienced some of the fastest temperature increases globally. They highlight that despite a pause in warming between 1999 and 2014 due to natural variability, the long-term warming trend is projected to continue at 0.34°C per decade until 2100.
The study uses satellite data from 1986 to 2021, applying normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and Tasseled Cap Greenness (TCG) as proxies for vegetation cover. Their analysis suggests a significant increase in moss-dominated ecosystems, with vegetation cover expanding from 0.863 km² in 1986 to 11.947 km² in 2021, and an accelerated rate of change in recent years (2016–2021) compared to the overall study period.
The authors link this greening primarily to temperature increases, citing the lengthening of growing seasons, warmer conditions, and increased moisture availability due to reductions in sea ice extent. However, they make only cursory mention of the larger, well-established phenomenon of CO2 fertilization and its role in global plant productivity increases.
Ignoring the Evidence for Global CO2 Fertilization
One of the major shortcomings of this study is its failure to consider or adequately address the global impact of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which are well known to enhance plant growth across a wide range of ecosystems. The phenomenon of CO2 fertilization has been extensively documented in studies like the one by Zhu et al. (2016), which found that global leaf area increased by over 10% in the past two decades, largely driven by CO2 enrichment.
The Antarctic Peninsula, though a unique and cold ecosystem, is not immune to the effects of global processes. The rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations has been shown to enhance photosynthesis and water-use efficiency in plants, enabling them to thrive even in areas where water or temperature might otherwise be limiting factors. This is particularly relevant in cold, high-latitude ecosystems where the growing season is short, and any enhancement in plant productivity due to higher CO2 levels could have an outsized impact on vegetation cover.
The fact that the authors of this study chose to ignore this well-documented global trend raises questions about the selectivity of their analysis. While they acknowledge that warming temperatures may play a role in greening, they fail to adequately explore how increased CO2 levels could be contributing to the observed changes in vegetation cover on the Antarctic Peninsula. By focusing almost exclusively on temperature as the driver of greening, they present an incomplete picture of the underlying processes.
Cherry-Picking Temperature Data
Another issue with the study is the apparent cherry-picking of temperature data to support the claim that warming is the primary driver of greening. The authors note a “recent pause in warming” between 1999 and 2014 but argue that the overall trend is one of continued warming. However, this “pause” is more than a minor footnote—it suggests that temperature is not the only or even the primary factor driving changes in vegetation cover.
In fact, the recent slowdown in warming across the Antarctic Peninsula, linked to natural variability, challenges the notion that temperature alone is responsible for the observed greening. If warming had paused or even reversed during this period, one would expect a corresponding slowdown in greening. Yet, the study finds that the rate of greening has accelerated in recent years, suggesting that factors other than temperature are at play.
This brings us back to CO2 fertilization. Even during periods of stable or declining temperatures, plants can continue to thrive and expand their ranges due to increased atmospheric CO2, which enhances their photosynthetic capacity and water-use efficiency. The failure to consider this factor in the analysis is a glaring omission, especially when the authors attempt to attribute all observed greening to temperature increases.
The Global Context of Greening
To better understand the limitations of this study, it’s useful to place the findings in the context of global greening trends. The Earth’s land surface has been “greening” for several decades, with large increases in leaf area across tropical forests, savannas, and boreal regions. This greening has been driven by a combination of factors, including CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, and land-use changes, with CO2 enrichment being the dominant factor.
Even in high-latitude regions, such as the Arctic and Antarctic, where temperatures have risen faster than the global average, CO2 fertilization plays a critical role. In these cold environments, the growing season is short, and any increase in photosynthetic efficiency can have a significant impact on vegetation cover. For example, in the Arctic, researchers have documented a similar greening trend, which has been attributed to both warming temperatures and increased CO2 availability.
The failure of the authors to engage with this broader body of literature on global greening and CO2 fertilization creates a skewed narrative. By attributing the greening of the Antarctic Peninsula almost exclusively to temperature increases, they overlook the more comprehensive explanation provided by global trends in plant productivity and atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Conclusions: A Narrow View of a Global Phenomenon
The study of the Antarctic Peninsula’s greening presents an interesting case of vegetation expansion in one of the planet’s coldest regions, but it suffers from a narrow and selective approach to explaining the phenomenon. By focusing almost exclusively on temperature as the driver of greening, the authors ignore the well-established global impact of CO2 fertilization, which has been shown to enhance plant growth across a wide range of ecosystems.
This selective focus on temperature is problematic for several reasons. First, it overlooks the fact that CO2 fertilization can drive plant productivity even in the absence of significant temperature increases. Second, it downplays the global context of greening, which has been observed in ecosystems ranging from tropical forests to Arctic tundra. Finally, by cherry-picking temperature data and ignoring periods of warming “pauses,” the authors present an incomplete picture of the factors driving vegetation change in the Antarctic Peninsula.
Ultimately, this study reflects a broader trend in climate science, where researchers often focus on temperature as the primary driver of environmental change while neglecting the significant role of CO2. While temperature undoubtedly plays a role in shaping ecosystems, it is only part of the story. The global greening phenomenon, driven by increased atmospheric CO2, is a critical factor that must be considered in any comprehensive analysis of vegetation change, whether in the Antarctic or elsewhere. It’s difficult to believe the level of myopia demonstrated by these experienced researchers was not intentional.
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Even if the greening of the Antarctic Peninsula is entirely driven by a small temperature increase, so what? The AP juts out toward the mid-latitudes, and is susceptible to changes in oceanic circulation patterns, the AAO, and ENSO. Global greening should be seen as a good thing, either by CO2 fertilization or slight warming. Also, more greening means more CO2 is being sequestered.
It won’t stop with moss- soon it might be tundra. Might want to transport some moose there. 🙂
Exactamundo. Why is green bad? Green means life, that something is alive in some microscopic corner of an entire continent of deathly cold. When did life become a Bad Thing? When did total death and lifelessness become the Desired Condition? Who is alarmed at life? Do they want to spray Antarctica with herbicides?
The Death First Cult rears its ugly head far too often these days. Please, all you satanic zombie types, put a sock in it. Be careful what you wish for, etc etc.
The warmunists have always embraced a myth of Goldilocks Earth – where until man started affecting CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the world was perfect … but now is sadly degraded. All change is “bad”, and all change in nature is due to man’s actions rather than due to any natural variability in weather or climate or greening or anything else.
It’s a mindset, not science.
There has been 22% of additional greening since 1900, when CO2 was 296 ppm
It is absolutely undeniable, additional greening took place in some Arctic areas since 1979, due to satellite measurements
These IPCC pseudo scientists should be lobotomized for spreading misinformation
Trump needs to be elected by a landslide to put a stop to this crap
“There’s none so blind as those who will not see”.
“All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest….”
A lot of that going around of late.
What a wise man that Paul Simon is…
Paul Simon
“The Boxer”
great song
I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station
Running scared Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know
Asking only workman’s wages, I come looking for a job But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there, la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Then I’m laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone, going home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleeding me Leading me, going home
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains
Story tip
Kamala Harris accused of plagiarism in co-authored 2009 book
Vice President Kamala Harris is facing allegations of plagiarism after numerous passages from the Democratic presidential nominee’s 2009 book “Smart on Crime” were discovered to closely resemble — or perfectly match — wording from other sources.
Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, wrote the book promoting a reform-minded approach to prosecuting crimes alongside ghostwriter Joan O’C. Hamilton — who told The Post when contacted Monday that she was surprised to learn about the alleged copying.
How original. Progressives are plagiarists, eg Claudine Gay of Harvard fame.
Joe Biden; MLK; Maureen Dowd; Fared Zakaria; the NY Times staff; Barak Obama …
Who did Obama plagiarize?
Where so many political tracts use the same loaded catch-phrases, it would be difficult to assemble a string of USA R or D political thought without independent rediscovery. The greater tragedy on the “Smart on Crime” case is that someone bought said book.
For a prostitute, plagiarism is low hanging fruit, the whore of babble-on.
Biden was her role model, even more so after some touchy feely sniffing
Contrary to the Attenborough doctrine, life finds a way.
True, it’s a fundamental principle of the cosmos.
And increasing the availability of the fundamental building block of life on Earth is helping life to find its way.
We cannot allow facts to get in the way of propaganda. No funding unless “climate change ” is blamed.
Somebody should apply for funding- and come up with a really wacky concept about climate change- just to see if a seriously wacky concept would get the money.
That’s already been done a thousand times! It works. Especially if the author has a Ph.D.
“Wilfully Blind to CO2 Fertilization”
As are all paleoclimate tree ring studies.
In recent studies, they use a borer to take a single cylindrical sample to study the tree rings.
I have cut down a lot of trees with a chainsaw. I have never yet cut one down that had a perfectly circular stump.
I bet with enough data points, it would be easily possible to bias a tree ring study just by selecting where in the tree circumference you take the borer sample.
Absolutely!
Oh noes!!! What shall we do! The barren ice-covered wasteland is turning green with vegetation and life! The horror!
Anyone who is particularly concerned about climate change should be given a one way ticket to this continent experiencing shocking ‘heat waves’.
Actually a tiny northern tip and a few minute offshore islands exhibit the signs of life for a few days each year when not snow covered.
You need to look very hard at the right time of the year to find green.
This is close to Deception Island where you can swim in warm coastal pools.
Here is a 2013 Google image of Barrientos Island (4th Nov)
Green is not unusual in this area.
11.947 km2 so something like 3 km by 4 km
I do not think overlooking CO2 fertilization is the major problem with this new alarm paper.
It reports that greening on the Antarctic Penninsula went from 0.863 km^2 to 11.947km^2. Pseudo accuracy given the remote sensing methodology. The Antarctic Penninsula alone comprises 522000km^2. So it went from 0.00000165 green to 0.00002289 green. Beyond rounding error de minimus alarm.
Really scraping the bottom of the alarm barrel.
Hey, it is just not possible to create the “Catastrophic” part of CAGW without considerable “fudging” of the numbers!
Grrr, agree. Just got back from lunch where I read award-winning literature. The literary types demonstrate such strong creativity and style but leave such gaping logical holes… Just read a short story where a punk rock band tours across a climate change devastated USA and I couldn’t take the internal inconsistencies. CC was just a backdrop, not the thesis. I got back to my computer and clicked through this article about moss in traditional ice zones.
Situations have winners AND losers, and consistently ignoring either fork even as a symbolic tool is devastating.GrrrRRRrrrrRRRRrrr.
So that great literature didn’t note that the punk rock fans were enjoying the new found prevalence of the moss pits?
How can 15 years just be considered a pause? The satellite data only goes back about 46 years.
My guess would be that the almighty models never indicated any pauses that long without some back-to-back volcanic eruptions…
https://www.danforthcenter.org/news/research-provides-crucial-insights-into-moss-growth-under-elevated-co2-levels-that-may-benefit-climate-change-models/
Article about moss and CO2. Takeaway points:
So,it sounds like more moss is great for the battle against CO2.
I am not going to pay 15 dollars to access the article.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Carbon Dioxide, Water and Sunlight yields Oxygen and Sugar.
Carbon Dioxide is just as important to life on Earth as Water.
Carbon Dioxide is way more important than mere fertilizer.
In a lot of places, nitrogen availability is the limiting factor in plant growth. That’s why we use so much natural gas to make ammonia and nitrate fertilizers. I wonder if places with little vegetation to take up all the available nitrogen means the soil maintains enough for nitrogen not to be the limit.
Then both temperature and CO2 should also be examined for their effects.
The CAGW crowd have nothing, this is a good example of them desperately clinging to their faith.
It is very unlikely that CO2 played a role here. Plant growth is usually limited by either temperature, sunlight, water or maybe soil nutrients. CO2 assists plants under water stress; they can open their stomata for shorter periods, thus limiting water loss. Plants in this region lack warmth, not water.
I didn’t know you were an expert bryologist, or are you just engaging in speculation, as you often accuse others of doing. On what basis, other than it doesn’t fit your narrative, do you say, “It is very unlikely that CO2 played a role here”?
As I explained, CO2 assists plants under water stress. Not here.
The Peninsula is on about the latitude of Norway. Plants get the same sunlight, same CO2, plenty of water. But one has mosses, the other forests. The difference is temperature.
Not true in dry season. Poikilohydric mosses dry out in drought and recover when adequate moisture is available.
As I explained, CO2 assists plants under water stress.
CO2 prevents water stress, you understand the difference ?
But it’s a side effect, not the reason.
I could have missed it in their paper but what are these mosses, Bryophytes presumably? We had a Bryophyte expert on the faculty, even once took him an important one from my property. Used to be their life cycles were shown in basic biology/botany classes. Citations are all from this millennium so maybe ecosystem species are now unimportant. A fair number of journals are that new. I saw a paper recently suggesting using virtual documents for fish specimens in class, but I’m not sure that I want a doctor that never played with real flesh, or much anything biological. If you don’t have to leave your office maybe you never knew much about the real world.
Thanks for your response. Full disclosure, I didn’t read the paper. In accusing Nick of engaging in speculation I did the same thing. I speculated that the head photo was from the area of discussion/study and that the green lumps in the photo were mosses. According to Wikipedia, Bryophytes include mosses, liverworts, and hornworts.
Wrong.
Average rainfall is not distributed in a nice little 1/365th bundle every day.
Once the moss on the top of a rock begins to dry out, that moss IS water stressed until the next precipitation event.
https://pulsegrow.com/blogs/learn/co2
“Plants in this region lack warmth, not water.”
It could be that they lack both.
CO2 is plant food.
Typically mosses lack stomata.
”It is very unlikely that CO2 played a role here.”
Hurrah… you’ve finally seen the light.
“It is very unlikely that CO2 played a role here”
Except that every cell of every living thing on the planet, flora and fauna, is composed of carbon compounds that were once in the air as CO2. Sue your school.
I don’t think the plants in greenhouses where they pump in CO2 to enhance growth are under water stress.
“It is very unlikely that CO2 played a role here”
Yep, we know the warming isn’t from CO2.
Thanks, Nick.
Look a little deeper. The ‘carbon’ in ‘carbon-based life’ comes from CO2.
Have not heard the term ‘carbon-based life’ in a long time
The NASA study a few years ago was very clear. The primary cause of the greening was increased CO2 and the secondary cause was global warming.
The CO2 provides the carbon that plants need to grow. In cold climates where there is little sunlight, the boost to photosynthesis by increased CO2 is probably very significant.
Making plants more resistive to drought is an additional advantage, not the main one.
Chris
Nick writes
So when the conditions become favourable to growth, the the higher levels of CO2 mean a greater rate of growth during those favourable conditions. Overall growth very much depends on CO2 levels.
Almost sounds like you could use tree ring widths as a proxy for CP2 in the air if you controlled for other factors.
If you read the paper I referred to about moss and higher CO2 levels causing better growth, there was no mention of water stress influencing the results.
STORY TIP: I would be interested to read comments on this new piece in Our World in Data:
https://ourworldindata.org/will-climate-change-affect-crop-yields-future?
What does the study tell us?
“Back in 1986, the images show that only one square kilometer of the peninsula was covered with vegetation. However, by 2021, this area had grown to almost 12 square kilometers.”
What does that mean?
0.00008% of Antarctica has turned green.
Climate Change is dangerous
Climate Change is scary
Climate Changes is the cause of everything bad
Climate Change will kill your dog\
Antarctica covers approximately 14.2 million square kilometers.
The notion the Antarctic Peninsula is warming is based on averages. It is not as cold in winter. But it is cooler in summer. The average is possibly warmer. But even that is not clear because the trends for east and west Antarctica reversed after 2000. The Southern Ocean has a sustained cooling trend throughout the satellite era.
This article is discussing a few tiny islands and the northern tip of the most northern portion of Antarctica.
Next thing we will hear Guterres proclaiming with immense hyperbole; :”oceans are boiling” “Antarctic is GREENING”. How bad can it get before there is no turning back and all the UN efforts to demonise coal have proven to have failed.
The authors of the study fail to engage with the effect of global greening and CO2 fertilization, not just because of myopia but also because of their evil motives.
Please be careful with assertions that a country or place is warming faster than the global average.
Literature searches easily confirm claims that every country is warming faster than average.
This is not a surprising outcome, impossible though it is, when the global warming theme has been developed with poor, exaggerated science.
Geoff S
https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/climate/when-every-temperature-is-above-average/
We know CO2 makes plants drought resistant, how does it make them cold resistant?