Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is of great importance to control the land‐atmosphere exchange of water and CO₂. Here we use in situ observations to assess the performance of monthly VPD calculated from state‐of‐the‐art data sets including CRU, ERA5, and Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA2). We investigate trends in VPD at global scale and for different climatic zones for 1981–2020 and future trends (2021–2100) from Coupled Model Inter‐comparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) outputs. The results show that monthly VPD estimated from CRU, ERA5, and MERRA2 correlated well against in situ estimates from 15,531 World Meteorological Organization stations, with R² ranging between 0.92 and 0.96. Moreover, robust correlations were also found across in situ stations and when analyzing different months separately. During 1981–2020, VPD increased in all climatic zones, with the strongest increase in the arid zone, followed by tropical, temperate, cold and polar zones. CMIP6 simulations show a continuously increasing trend in VPD (0.028 hPa year⁻¹), with the largest increase in the arid zone (0.063 hPa year⁻¹). The magnitudes of trends are found to increase following the magnitude of CO₂ increases in the future emission scenarios. We highlight that atmospheric aridification will continue under global warming, which may pose an increasing threat to terrestrial ecosystems and particularly dryland agricultural systems.

Agroforestry practices that include the integration of multifunctional trees within agricultural lands can generate multiple socioecological benefits, in addition to being a natural climate solution due to the associated carbon sequestration potential. Such agroforestry trees represent a vital part of India’s landscapes. However, despite their importance, a current lack of robust monitoring mechanisms has contributed to an insufficient grasp of their distribution in relation to management practices, as well as their vulnerability to climate change and diseases. Here we map 0.6 billion farmland trees, excluding block plantations, in India and track them over the past decade. We show that around 11 ± 2% of the large trees (about 96 m² crown size) mapped in 2010/2011 had disappeared by 2018. Moreover, during the period 2018–2022, more than 5 million large farmland trees (about 67 m² crown size) have vanished, due partly to altered cultivation practices, where trees within fields are perceived as detrimental to crop yields. These observations are particularly unsettling given the current emphasis on agroforestry as a pivotal natural climate solution, playing a crucial role in both climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, in addition to being important for supporting agricultural livelihoods and improving biodiversity.

Tropical savannas comprise mixed woodland grassland ecosystems in which trees and grasses compete for water resources thereby maintaining the spatial structuring of this ecosystem. A global change in rainfall climatology may impact the structure of tropical savanna ecosystems by favouring woody plants, relative to herbaceous vegetation. Here we analysed satellite data and observed a relatively higher increase in woody vegetation (5%) as compared to the increase in annual maximum leaf area index (LAI_max, an indicator of the total green vegetation production) (3%) in arid and semi-arid savannas over recent decades. We further observed a declining sensitivity of LAI_max to annual rainfall over 56% of the tropical savannas, spatially overlapping with areas of increased woody cover and altered rainfall climatology. This suggests a climate-induced shift in the coexistence of woody and herbaceous vegetation in savanna ecosystems, possibly caused by altered hydrological conditions with significance for land cover and associated biophysical effects such as surface albedo and evapotranspiration.

Changes in heat and moisture significantly co-alter ecosystem functioning. However, knowledge on dynamics of ecosystem responses to climate change is limited. Here, we quantify long-term ecosystem sensitivity based on weighted ratios of vegetation productivity variability and multiple climate variables from satellite observations, greater values of which indicate more yields per hydrothermal condition change. Our results show ecosystem sensitivity exhibits large spatial variability and increases with the aridity index. A positive temporal trend of ecosystem sensitivity is found in 61.28% of the study area from 2001 to 2021, which is largely attributed to declining vapor pressure deficit and constrained by solar radiation. Moreover, carbon dioxide plays a dual role; which in moderation promotes fertilization effects, whereas in excess may suppress vegetation growth by triggering droughts. Our findings highlight moisture stress between land and atmosphere is one of the key prerequisites for ecosystem stability, offsetting part of the negative effects of heat.