A greening Earth has reversed the trend of decreasing carbonate weathering under a warming climate.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40089505.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-57899-z and PMC identifier 11910566.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
The response of mineral weathering and its related Weathering Sink for atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> (WS<sub>atm-CO2</sub>) to global vegetation greening are not well understood. After applying different biogeochemical models and a field experiment to investigate the influence of vegetation greening and warming on the variations of carbonate weathering and WS<sub>atm-CO2</sub> on regional and global scales, here we show a significant positive relationship between global carbonate weathering intensity ([HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup>] as a proxy) and vegetation greenness. During 1982-2018, under a warming climate, [HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup>] and WS<sub>atm-CO2</sub> increase by 5.8% and 6.1%, respectively, due to vegetation greening, in the carbonate areas of Southwest China. Meanwhile, the [HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup>] in global carbonate areas increases by +2.4% during the same period. By contrast, the [HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup>] in global carbonate areas decreases by -1.3% without a vegetation function due to the warming. Moreover, we estimated that the carbonate weathering enhancements due to vegetation restoration at the global scale could reach 43.8%. Our results demonstrate that future vegetation restoration is important for the carbon capture by mineral weathering.