We have shown (here and here and here) that if you only read the IPCC short Summaries, or even the long Summaries or the Technical Summaries, you won’t learn a thing about CO2-induced global greening. Even though it’s a pretty remarkable phenomenon, they don’t seem to want you to find out about it. Is it because they don’t know about it? Hardly, they discuss it openly in the body of the report. If you know where to look and can keep yourself awake through the section.

Here, unspun, is Section 2.3.4.3.3 of the AR6 Working Group I report, entitled “Global greening and browning”.

“The AR5 WGII briefly discussed changes in global vegetation greenness derived from satellite proxies for photosynthetic activity. Observed trends varied in their strength and consistency, and AR5 thus made no confidence statement on observed changes. The [Special Report on Climate Change and Land SRCCL] subsequently concluded that greening had increased globally over the past 2–3 decades (high confidence).
The AR5 WGII briefly discussed changes in global vegetation greenness derived from satellite proxies for photosynthetic activity. Observed trends varied in their strength and consistency, and AR5 thus made no confidence statement on observed changes. The SRCCL subsequently concluded that greening had increased globally over the past 2–3 decades (high confidence).
Vegetation index data derived from AVHRR and MODIS depicts increases in aspects of vegetation greenness (i.e., green leaf area and/or mass) over the past four decades (Piao et al., 2020). NDVI increased globally from the early 1980s through the early 2010s Y. Liu et al., 2015a). N. Pan et al. (2018) found NDVI increases over about 70% of the Earth’s vegetated surface through 2013, and Osborne et al. (2018) noted strong upward changes in NDVI in the circumpolar Arctic through 2016. Globally integrated Leaf Area Index (LAI) also rose from the early 1980s through at least the early 2010s (Zhu et al., 2016; Forzieri et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2017; Xiao et al., 2017) and probably through near-present; for example, C. Chen et al. (2019) documented an LAI increase over one-third of the global vegetated area from 2000–2017. …” [There follows a discussion of regional results].
Global-scale linear trends differ substantially across products for the same periods and trend metrics used (Jiang et al., 2017). Several factors contribute to this large span in estimated changes. Remotely sensed vegetation products vary in their spatial and temporal completeness as well as resolution and are sensitive to contamination from atmospheric composition, clouds, snow cover, and anisotropy, as well as orbital changes and sensor degradations (de Jong et al., 2012; Zhu et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2017; Xiao et al., 2017; N. Pan et al., 2018). Ground-based measurements suitable for calibration and validation are scarce before 2000 (Xiao et al., 2017), and the recalibration of satellite records (e.g., as in from MODIS Collection 5 to 6) can affect trends (Piao et al., 2020). It is possible that the increase in greenness over 2000–2015 is larger than the increase in gross primary production (based on flux tower measurements and MODIS Collection 6 data) (L. Zhang et al., 2018). Land use changes and altered disturbance regimes (e.g., floods, fires, diseases) may mask large-scale signals (Franklin et al., 2016). In addition, there is a plethora of models for the identification of phenological metrics from satellite data as well as a variety of statistical techniques for analysing historical changes (S. Wang et al., 2016).
In summary, there is high confidence that vegetation greenness (i.e., green leaf area and/or mass) has increased globally since the early 1980s. However, there is low confidence in the magnitude of this increase owing to the large range in available estimates.”

Also:

(p. 202) Chapter Summary: “Since the early 1980s, there has been a global-scale increase in the greenness of the terrestrial surface (high confidence).”

Which, admittedly, is not exactly gripping prose. Who says “a global-scale greenness of the terrestrial surface” for “more plants worldwide” unless trying not to be clear or congenitally incapable of it? And while they admit that greening is happening and has increased, they quibble and cavil and make a big deal of the uncertainties in some of the measurements so they can shrug and say they don’t really know by how much. They don’t want it to be.

Of course this apparent caution would be fine if they also made a big deal of the uncertainties in, say, climate models or measurements of global average temperature and said in consequence they don’t really know how much warming has happened or whether model projections are worth taking seriously. But in those cases mere uncertainty doesn’t ever get in the way of a good story. Whereas in the case of global greening, which is definitely a good story, they manage to squeeze the discussion in just in case so if some snoop goes beyond the silence of the summaries and checks to see what the chapters have to say, they can claim to have discussed it. Just not in a way that anyone would notice.

Unlike greening itself which many scientists have noticed, as we’ll discuss next week.