A global statistic blends greening slowly in some areas, browning faster in others. A fire can in a few hours devastate a forest in an area that became too arid, while it may take a century for a forest to grow in an area where climate improved. So while climate warming accelerates this’ll get worse, but if the same climate stabilised the global vegetation cover at equilibrium might be not so bad (even if very bad in some regions).
Regarding air moisture, both H2O and and CO2 pass through the same stomata in leaves, so there was some hope that plants could open these less at higher CO2 and thus resist drought, but as with all such effects the benefit tapers off.
Anyway all policy scenarios with any hope of staying below 2ºC, let alone 1.5ºC, include a lot of net reforestation. So we’ll have to turn this around, somewhere.
A global statistic blends greening slowly in some areas, browning faster in others. A fire can in a few hours devastate a forest in an area that became too arid, while it may take a century for a forest to grow in an area where climate improved. So while climate warming accelerates this’ll get worse, but if the same climate stabilised the global vegetation cover at equilibrium might be not so bad (even if very bad in some regions). Regarding air moisture, both H2O and and CO2 pass through the same stomata in leaves, so there was some hope that plants could open these less at higher CO2 and thus resist drought, but as with all such effects the benefit tapers off.
Anyway all policy scenarios with any hope of staying below 2ºC, let alone 1.5ºC, include a lot of net reforestation. So we’ll have to turn this around, somewhere.