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Global vegetation production may decrease in this century due to rising atmospheric dryness

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 2279–2289 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Previous projections from Earth system models have suggested that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations would stimulate global vegetation production through the CO2 fertilization effect. Here we show that increased atmospheric dryness driven by climate warming will substantially counteract this effect. Using measurements from global eddy-covariance sites and a process-based model, we project that global vegetation gross primary production (GPP) will peak around the middle of the twenty-first century and subsequently decline. The peak of global GPP is projected to increase by only 5.4 ± 0.5% compared with the present. The stalled increase in GPP is more prominent in tropical regions. Additionally, the increased atmospheric dryness resulting from two non-CO2 greenhouse gases (CH4 and N2O) plays an important role in GPP changes. These gases induce climate warming and atmospheric dryness but, unlike CO2, lack a fertilization effect. This study underscores that climate warming-induced atmospheric dryness markedly reduces terrestrial vegetation production, potentially limiting the terrestrial carbon sink in the future.

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Fig. 1: Observed LUE responses to meteorological variables and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Fig. 2: Changes in LUE responding to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and VPD.
Fig. 3: Changes in simulated LUE between future (2090–2100) and present (2010–2020) across four scenarios and eight ecosystem types.
Fig. 4: Projected years of maximum global GPP.
Fig. 5: Contributions of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and non-CO2 GHGs to VPD and GPP changes in the four SSP scenarios.

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Data availability

All data used in this study are openly available from the following: CMIP6 output (https://aims2.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/); ERA5 (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-land?tab=overview); FLUXNET 2015 (https://fluxnet.org/data/fluxnet2015-dataset/); ICOS (https://www.icos-cp.eu/data-products/2G60-ZHAK); AmeriFlux (https://ameriflux.lbl.gov/sites/site-search/); OzFlux (https://data.ozflux.org.au/home.jspx); AsiaFlux (https://db.cger.nies.go.jp/asiafluxdb/); and GLASS-LAI (https://glass.hku.hk/archive/LAI/MODIS/500M/). Any additional information may be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Matlab code for the rEC-LUE-v.2 performed in this study is available via Code Ocean at https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.4541304.v1

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42141020 and 42101319), National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2023YFF1303602) and the Science and Technology Program of Guangdong (no. 2024B1212070012).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Shangrong Lin, Xiuzhi Chen.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Province Data Center of Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems Carbon Cycle, School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Shangrong Lin

  2. Guangdong Province Data Center of Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems Carbon Cycle, School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China

    Xiuzhi Chen

  3. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China

    Jiangzhou Xia

  4. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Qinchuan Xin

  5. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zheng Fu

  6. College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Bin He

  7. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Qinhuo Liu

  8. Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Shilong Piao & Wenping Yuan

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  1. Shangrong Lin
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Contributions

S.L., X.C. and W.Y. conceived the study. S.L., W.Y., J.X. and X.C. contributed to early-stage discussions. S.L. collected and preprocessed the data and the code. S.L., J.X. and W.Y. performed the analysis, led the result interpretation and drafted the initial paper. X.C., Q.X., Z.F., B.H., Q.L. and S.P. contributed to the development and discussion of the methods. All co-authors reviewed the results and contributed to the writing and revision of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenping Yuan.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–19 and Tables 1–4.

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Supplementary Data 1

Source geotiff data for Fig. 4e which should be open as .geotiff format with Arcmap or Python script. The numbers in the .tif file are the years.

Supplementary Data 2

Source geotiff data for Fig. 4f which should be open as .geotiff format with Arcmap or Python script. The numbers in the .tif file are the years.

Supplementary Data 3

Source geotiff data for Fig. 4g which should be open as .geotiff format with Arcmap or Python script. The numbers in the .tif file are the years.

Supplementary Data 4

Source geotiff data for Fig. 4h which should be open as .geotiff format with Arcmap or Python script. The numbers in the .tif file are the years.

Source data

Source Data Figs. 1–5

Statistical source data for Fig. 1a,b, Fig. 2a–e and Fig. 3a–h (unit in gC MJ−1 m−2); Fig. 4a–d (unit in PgC yr−1); Fig. 5a–d (unit in hPa); Fig. 5e–h (unit in PgC yr−1).

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Lin, S., Chen, X., Xia, J. et al. Global vegetation production may decrease in this century due to rising atmospheric dryness. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 2279–2289 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02885-3

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