Regional Emergence of Water‐Related Browning in a Greening World
The Earth is greening in many regions under elevated atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentrations, along with increasing temperature and land use changes. However, despite the continued rise in CO<sub>2</sub>, greening has stagnated or even reversed in some regions, suggesting a reduced capacity of the land surface to act as a carbon sink. Here, we show that declining water availability and rising atmospheric water demand have coincided with regional browning trends over recent decades in some tropical regions that have historically acted as prominent carbon sinks. A regression analysis considering a balanced set of water- and energy-related variables alongside land cover change and climate extremes confirms that both water availability and atmospheric water demand are important contributors to inter-annual variability in Leaf Area Index (LAI) there. Earth system models mostly reproduce the observed spatial extent of browning and concurrent related coinciding water changes in the multi-model mean, but results from individual models differ strongly. Our findings provide a new constraint for related model development and highlight the need for enhanced monitoring and consideration of observation-based water availability trends as an emerging driver of vegetation in future analyses and model development.
Authors
- Jasper Denissen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7945-5619)
- Melissa Ruiz‐Vásquez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9847-3399)
- Adriaan J. Teuling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4302-2835)
- Hui Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6454-8954)
- Diego G. Miralles (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6186-5751)
- Anne J. Hoek van Dijke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0354-8517)
- Xin Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4307-1103)
- Ana Bastos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7368-7806)
- O Sungmin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7364-2122)
- Benjamin David Stocker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-9096)
- René Orth (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9853-921X)
- Wantong Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9861-4294)
- Andrew F. Feldman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1547-6995)
- Lan Wang‐Erlandsson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7739-5069)
- Josephin Kroll
- Chunhui Zhan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7716-8969)
- Mirco Migliavacca (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3546-8407)
Institutions
- University of Bern (CH)
- Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (CH)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- Stockholm Resilience Centre (SE)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (GB)
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Stockholm University (SE)
- Kangwon National University (KR)
- Leibniz Association (DE)
- Ghent University (BE)
- Hydrion (Netherlands) (NL)
- Joint Research Centre (IT)
- Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (DE)
- Bolin Centre for Climate Research (SE)
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- Wageningen University & Research (NL)
- Leipzig University (DE)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Global Change Biology
- Published
- 2025-12-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70620
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.11
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- National Research Foundation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas
- Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- Southern University of Science and Technology
- HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme