This greening story – a tale that gets more impressive every year – is largely absent from the mainstream media. It was certainly missing from a recent climate contribution from Sandwich-board Stanley (a.k.a. Tim Stanley of the Telegraph) who made an unsourced claim that one third of the agricultural production of Bangladesh “is feared to vanish by 2050”. Happily, there is no sign of that invented fear coming true since agricultural production has more than doubled in the country since the turn of the century. Notes Stanley: “The evidence is stacking up – we only have to look out of our windows,” a comment that suggests journalists hired to broadcast opinions and beliefs should steer well clear of science where data and facts are given a higher priority.
Back in the real increasingly verdant world, the Nature-published scientists note that herbaceous ecosystems such as grasslands and crop fields dominate the greening signal. 72.1% of grasslands showed greening while the overall satellite data reveal 68.% of the total vegetation area showed improvement, up from the previous record set last year of 67.7%. Greening ‘hotspots’ were observed in southern Africa, southern South America, northern Australia, Europe, central North America and northern China. Some ‘browning’ was observed in eastern Siberia, and this was attributed to anomalously cold growing-season temperatures.
