A team of researchers lead by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Climate Change Science Institute discovered a correlation between human activity and the greening of the Northern Hemisphere.
Researchers tried to account for natural forcings, such as volcanoes and solar radiation, but found that the greening was inconsistent with those computer model simulations. Instead they found that the only explanation could be anthropogenic forcings like greenhouse gas emissions, as reported by Phys.org Wednesday.
“Our findings reveal that the observed greening record is consistent with an assumption of anthropogenic forcings, where greenhouse gases play a dominant role, but is not consistent with simulations that include only natural forcings and internal climate variability,” the report says. “These results provide the first clear evidence of a discernible human fingerprint on physiological vegetation changes other than phenology and range shifts.”
The greening — which leads to more vegetation — could potentially accelerate any warming as more vegetation means more water vapor introduced into the atmosphere.
“The addition of the non-condensable gases causes the temperature to increase and this leads to an increase in water vapor that further increases the temperature,” the American Chemical Society said in a statement released on its website.
There is another line of thought that greening could actually cool the planet. A study published by the journal Nature Climate Change, says there is a “correlation with the greening of the Earth and a slow down in climate change,” as reported by Geek.com in May.
Besides the implications about the ability to grow more crops on a greener Earth, there is another welcome aspect of the greening: less dust. Dust may not seem like a big deal, but when it settles on Arctic ice it speeds up the process of melting by trapping heat that would normally be reflected back into space by ice.
“More grass growing means less dust blowing,” entrepreneur Russ George said in a post on his website in April.
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