In view of future changes in climate, it is important to better understand how different plant functional groups (PFGs) respond to warmer and drier conditions, particularly in temperate regions where an increase in both the frequency and severity of drought is expected. The patterns and mechanisms of immediate and delayed impacts of extreme drought on vegetation growth remain poorly quantified. Using satellite measurements of vegetation greenness, in‐situ tree‐ring records, eddy‐covariance CO₂ and water flux measurements, and meta‐analyses of source water of plant use among PFGs, we show that drought legacy effects on vegetation growth differ markedly between forests, shrubs and grass across diverse bioclimatic conditions over the temperate Northern Hemisphere. Deep−rooted forests exhibit a drought legacy response with reduced growth during up to 4 years after an extreme drought, whereas shrubs and grass have drought legacy effects of approximately 2 years and 1 year, respectively. Statistical analyses partly attribute the differences in drought legacy effects among PFGs to plant eco‐hydrological properties (related to traits), including plant water use and hydraulic responses. These results can be used to improve the representation of drought response of different PFGs in land surface models, and assess their biogeochemical and biophysical feedbacks in response to a warmer and drier climate.

A dangerous trend: How anthropogenically driven climate change is affecting heat waves and drought is one of the most important environmental issues facing societies around the globe. Zhang et al. present a 260-year-long record of temperature and soil moisture over inner East Asia that reveals an abrupt shift to hotter and drier conditions (see the Perspective by Zhang and Fang). Extreme episodes of hotter and drier climate over the past 20 years, which are unprecedented in the earlier records, are caused by a positive feedback loop between soil moisture deficits and surface warming and potentially represent the start of an irreversible trend. Science , this issue p. 1095 ; see also p. 1037

The time required for an ecosystem to recover from severe drought is a key component of ecological resilience. The phenology effects on drought recovery are, however, poorly understood. These effects centre on how phenology variations impact biophysical feedbacks, vegetation growth and, ultimately, recovery itself. Using multiple remotely sensed datasets, we found that more than half of ecosystems in mid- and high-latitudinal Northern Hemisphere failed to recover from extreme droughts within a single growing season. Earlier spring phenology in the drought year slowed drought recovery when extreme droughts occurred in mid-growing season. Delayed spring phenology in the subsequent year slowed drought recovery for all vegetation types (with importance of spring phenology ranging from 46% to 58%). The phenology effects on drought recovery were comparable to or larger than other well-known postdrought climatic factors. These results strongly suggest that the interactions between vegetation phenology and drought must be incorporated into Earth system models to accurately quantify ecosystem resilience.