When extreme drought strikes, drier grasslands receive the greatest productivity benefit from biodiversity. By contrast, forests did not show the same context-dependent pattern under drought, according to a new global synthesis of 75 biodiversity experiments. Researchers from YOKOHAMA National University published their results in Nature Ecology & Evolution on July 15.

Plants adjust protein production within minutes to protect themselves from intense light. A newly discovered signaling pathway enables ultra-fast stress responses and opens new avenues for climate-resilient crops.

Lakes, often called the 'lungs of the land,' play a fundamental role in the global carbon cycle, acting as significant reservoirs of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and sources of greenhouse gases. Understanding how this vital organic carbon pool responds to environmental changes is crucial, yet large-scale drivers of lake DOM composition and their interaction with climate change have remained poorly understood. A comprehensive study led by Siyue Li from the Wuhan Institute of Technology has provided unprecedented insights into these dynamics across China's diverse lake ecosystems.

While the world watches the Pacific for signs of a possible "Super El Niño," new research suggests another tropical ocean may hold important clues to future climate extremes. Scientists have discovered that temperature patterns in the Indian Ocean can influence prolonged winter dry spells in the Eastern Mediterranean months in advance by reshaping large-scale atmospheric circulation. The findings reveal how distant ocean conditions can affect weather thousands of kilometers away and could improve seasonal forecasting of drought risk in one of the world's most water-stressed regions.

A large international team including researchers from the University of Tokyo wanted to know if and how climate change might increase the number of suicides associated with temperature around the world. Previous studies showed that hotter weather is often linked to a higher risk of suicide, but the present study combined data from an unprecedented 751 locations in 26 countries and used advanced climate models to estimate how the number of suicides related to temperature might change by the 2050s under different climate change scenarios. 

POSTECH Professor Jonghun Kam’s research team, in collaboration with KRIHS, NDMI, Stanford University, and the National University of Singapore (NUS), presents AI-based, region-specific water conservation scenarios using drought news data.

Efforts to plant more trees in cities could be boosted thanks to a new tool for planners and community groups, published by an international group of researchers.

A new study published in Big Earth Data  introduces the University of Bonn Soil Moisture Data Catalog (UB-SMDC), a standards-compliant metadata portal that centralizes information on publicly available soil moisture content (SMC) datasets and provides a unified platform for efficient data discovery, comparison, and access. Built on the GeoNetwork platform and supported by a controlled metadata taxonomy, the catalog analyzes 373 SMC datasets, facilitating transparent research, cross-dataset integration, and a comprehensive understanding of the global soil moisture data landscape.The data and materials supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All metadata records are cataloged and publicly accessible in the UB-SMDC GeoNetwork data portal (https://ubsmdc.sfb1502.de/).