Sep 16 2001
From The Space Library
A group of scientists led by Liming Zhou of Boston University published research indicating that substantial portions of the northern hemisphere had experienced effects of global warming. The scientists, who were studying the responses of vegetation to temperature changes, had used satellite data collected from July 1981 to December 1999 and had found a persistent increase in the length of the growing season in the majority of vegetated areas in the northern latitudes of Asia and Europe. A similar trend was evident in North America, but in a relatively lower proportion of land area. The data had also revealed declines in vegetated area in Alaska, Canada, and some parts of Asia, which may have resulted from temperature-induced drought in those areas. In addition, the scientists discovered a statistically significant relationship between changes in vegetated area and increasing land surface temperatures, indicating that climatic changes may have led to changes in vegetative activity in much of the world. (NASA, “Earth’s Becoming a Greener Greenhouse,” news release 01-178, 4 September 2001; L. Zhou et al., “Variations in Northern Vegetation Activity Inferred from Satellite Data of Vegetation Index During 1981 to 1999,” Journal of Geophysical Research 106, no. D17 (16 September 2001): 20069–20083.)
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