But itвЂ™s far more difficult to measure how much carbon dioxide an entire forest takes up. To measure this photosynthetic activity, scientists can put a leaf in a closed chamber and quantify the dropping carbon dioxide levels in the air inside. Plants, through photosynthesis, and soils sequester roughly a third of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere each decade from the burning of fossil fuels.Дuring photosynthesis, plants open tiny pores on their leaf surfaces to suck carbon dioxide from the air and produce their own food. вЂњItвЂ™s not stopping climate change by any means, but it is helping us slow it down.вЂќ Measuring photosynthesisД«ecause carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere decades longer than other greenhouse gases driving global warming, efforts to reduce it are critical to mitigating climate change. вЂњThis is a very large increase in photosynthesis, but itвЂ™s nowhere close to removing the amount of carbon dioxide weвЂ™re putting into the atmosphere,вЂќ said Berkeley Lab scientist Trevor Keenan, lead author of the study. Not all of the carbon taken out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis is stored in ecosystems, as much is later released back to the atmosphere through respiration, but the study reports a direct link between the increased photosynthesis and increased global carbon storage. The 12% increase in photosynthesis translates to 14 petagrams of additional carbon taken out of the atmosphere by plants each year, roughly the equivalent of the carbon emitted worldwide from burning fossil fuels in 2020 alone.

In that same time period, global carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere grew about 17%, from 360 parts per million (ppm) to 420 ppm.

Now an international team of researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have used a novel methodology combining remote sensing, machine learning, and terrestrial biosphere models to find that plants are indeed photosynthesizing more, to the tune of 12% higher global photosynthesis from 1982 to 2020. In fact, the United States and many other countries that participated in last monthвЂ™s UN Climate Change Conference have made nature-based solutions a critical feature of their carbon dioxide mitigation framework under the Paris Agreement.ДЄs human activities cause more carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere, scientists have debated whether plants are responding by photosynthesizing more and sucking up even more carbon dioxide than they already do вЂ“ and if so, is it a little or a lot more. (Credit: baona/iStock)Д«ecause plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into food, forests and other similar ecosystems are considered to be some of the planetвЂ™s most important carbon sinks. A new study finds that plants are photosynthesizing more in response to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but nowhere near enough to remove all emissions.

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