Increased Global Vegetation Productivity Despite Rising Atmospheric Dryness Over the Last Two Decades

Abstract

Rising atmospheric dryness [vapor pressure deficit (VPD)] can limit photosynthesis and thus reduce vegetation productivity. Meanwhile, plants can benefit from global warming and the fertilization effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). There are growing interests to study climate change impacts on terrestrial vegetation. However, global vegetation productivity responses to recent climate and CO2 trends remain to be fully understood. Here, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of the relative impacts of VPD, temperature, and atmospheric CO2 concentration on global vegetation productivity over the last two decades using a robust ensemble of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) and gross primary productivity (GPP) data. We document a significant increase in global vegetation productivity with rising VPD, temperature, and atmospheric CO2 concentration over this period. For global SIF (or GPP), the decrease due to rising VPD was comparable to the increase due to warming but far less than the increase due to elevated CO2 concentration. We found that rising VPD counteracted only a small proportion (approximately 8.1%–15.0%) of the warming and CO2-induced increase in global SIF (or GPP). Despite the sharp rise in atmospheric dryness imposing a negative impact on plants, the warming and CO2 fertilization effects contributed to a persistent and widespread increase in vegetation productivity over the majority (approximately 66.5%–72.2%) of the globally vegetated areas. Overall, our findings provide a quantitative and comprehensive attribution of rising atmospheric dryness on global vegetation productivity under concurrent climate warming and CO2 increasing.