Global Terrestrial Photosynthesis Increased Substantially During 2000–2023, Driven by Changing Atmospheric CO2 Concentration, Climate, and Vegetation

Li Pan , Xiangming Xiao , Cheng Meng , Baihong Pan , Shenglai Yin , Chenchen Zhang , Yuan Yao , Yuanwei Qin

Engineering ›› : 202609014

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Engineering ›› :202609014 DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2026.09.014
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Global Terrestrial Photosynthesis Increased Substantially During 2000–2023, Driven by Changing Atmospheric CO2 Concentration, Climate, and Vegetation
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Abstract

Modeling and prediction of terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) in the globe face many challenges. Here we use the Vegetation Photosynthesis Model (VPM-v4), satellite images, atmospheric CO2 concentration data, ERA5-Land dataset, and annual land cover maps to estimate global GPP during 2000–2023. At the site scale, annual GPP and its interannual variability (IAV), and the trends from VPM-v4 have strong agreement with those from the eddy covariance tower sites that have ≥ 10 years of measurements, a total of 777 site-years. At the global scale, global annual GPP estimate from VPM-v4 varies from 145 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C·a−1) in 2000 to 166 Pg C·a−1 in 2023, with an increasing trend of 0.78 Pg C·a−2, which is higher than that from most terrestrial biospheric models (TBMs) and Earth system models (ESMs). The biochemical CO2 effect on annual GPP varies among the biomes and is high in tropical and subtropical forests and contributes substantially to continued increase of global annual GPP during 2000–2023. In comparison to many TBMs and ESMs, global GPP estimates from VPM-v4 falls within the range of annual GPP estimates from carbonyl sulfide (OCS)-based method (157 Pg C·a−1; 2000–2010), respiration-based method (149 Pg C·a−1), and18O-based method (150–175 Pg C·a−1). By integrating a Farquhar–von Caemmerer–Berry model (FvCB)-based representation of the biochemical CO2 effect into a scalable satellite-based light use efficiency (LUE) framework, this study bridges biochemical photosynthesis theory and global remote-sensing observations, advances the

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Gross primary production / Climate change / Light use efficiency / Remote sensing / CO2 concentration

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Li Pan, Xiangming Xiao, Cheng Meng, Baihong Pan, Shenglai Yin, Chenchen Zhang, Yuan Yao, Yuanwei Qin. Global Terrestrial Photosynthesis Increased Substantially During 2000–2023, Driven by Changing Atmospheric CO2 Concentration, Climate, and Vegetation. Engineering 202609014 DOI:10.1016/j.eng.2026.09.014

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