Overview
- A peer‑reviewed paper by Jacob Haqq‑Misra and Eric Wolf models Earth’s climate over the next two billion years and finds terrestrial plants likely persist until roughly 1.84–1.87 billion years from now.
- The team used a 3D climate model that couples long‑term solar brightening with the carbonate–silicate weathering cycle, which controls atmospheric CO2 over hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
- In a strong‑weathering scenario the model predicts CO2 will be drawn down so far that plants die of carbon starvation around 1.84 billion years, while a weak‑weathering case leads to mean land temperatures near 65°C and plant loss around 1.87 billion years.
- The simulations do not include biological evolution or future technology such as geoengineering or species adaptation, so the authors caution these omitted factors could extend plant survival beyond their modeled limits.
- The results, published in mid‑2026 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, extend previous estimates and suggest Earth’s photosynthetic life may endure up to the point when oceans begin to be lost, a finding relevant to long‑term habitability and astrobiology.