The new study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries.From the website Wattsupwiththat:
It is called Greening of the Earth and its Drivers, and it is based on data from the Modis and AVHRR instruments which have been carried on American satellites over the past 33 years.The sensors show significant greening of something between 25% and 50% of the Earth's vegetated land, which in turn is slowing the pace of climate change as the plants are drawing CO2 from the atmosphere.
“The greening over the past 33 years reported in this study is equivalent to adding a green continent about two-times the size of mainland USA (18 million km2), and has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” says lead author Dr. Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first-half of this study as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, USA, together with Prof. Myneni.So this greening has been going on for almost a generation. If the benefit does diminish, it's clear the diminishing effect takes a very, very long time. All the more reason NOT to try to curtail CO2 increases. And we can take advantage of this affect to feed the world.