Fig. 5: Climatological temperature sensitivity of protected and unprotected soil C across temperature regimes.

a,b, The proportional decline in protected (a) and unprotected (b) soil C stocks for a 10 °C increase in MAT, controlling for potential confounding variables. Proportional declines are shown for cool climates (0 °C < MAT < 15 °C; blue circles) and warm climates (MAT ≥ 15 °C; red circles). Results are shown for the data product (black triangles), the multi-model ensemble mean (asterisks) and each ESM and offline land model (solid circles; labelled with abbreviations); 95% CIs are given in Supplementary Table 6. Kernel density estimates are shown for each panel, illustrating the distribution of climatological temperature sensitivities across the model ensemble for each pool and temperature regime. Higher values (>1) indicate greater decreases in C with increasing climatological temperature, lower values (<1) indicate increases in C and values equal to 1 (grey dashed line) indicate thermal independence.