Recent global decline of CO <sub>2</sub> fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis
Songhan Wang, Yongguang Zhang, Weimin Ju, Jing M. Chen, Philippe Ciais, Alessandro Cescatti, Jordi Sardans, Ivan A. Janssens, Mousong Wu, Joseph A. Berry, Elliott Campbell, Marcos Fernández‐Martínez, Ramdane Alkama, Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein, William K. Smith, Wenping Yuan, Wei He, Danica Lombardozzi, Markus Kautz, Dan Zhu, Sebastian Lienert, Etsushi Kato, Benjamin Poulter, Tanja Sanders, Inken Krüger, Rong Wang, Ning Zeng, Hanqin Tian, Nicolas Vuichard, Atul K. Jain, Andy Wiltshire, Vanessa Haverd, Daniel S. Goll, Josep Peñuelas
Abstract
A decline in the carbon fertilization effect One source of uncertainty in climate science is how the carbon fertilization effect (CFE) will contribute to mitigation of anthropogenic climate change. Wang et al. explored the temporal dynamics of CFE on vegetation photosynthesis at the global scale. There has been a decline over recent decades in the contribution of CFE to vegetation photosynthesis, perhaps owing to the limiting effects of plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. This declining trend has not been adequately accounted for in carbon cycle models. CFE thus has limitations for long-term mitigation of climate change, and future warming might currently be underestimated. Science , this issue p. 1295